At the Very Ports We Blow
by baka deshi
Summary: COMPLETE. Edward Elric has made his way to the University of Munich, where he faces a new challenge in the eerily familiar face of his peer and colleague, Alfons Heiderich. There's just one problem: the two of them have to get along. Premovie
1. Effect of Impact on Stationary Objects

**Title:** At the very ports we blow (part 1 of 2)

**Pairing:** None (gen)

**Rating:** PG-13

**Warnings:** Post-series, pre-movie. Spoilers only for Alfons Heiderich's existence.

**Summary: **Edward Elric, aged 16 years and change, has made his way to the University of Munich, where he faces a new challenge - in the eerily familiar face of his peer and colleague, Alfons Heiderich. Both are studying the fascinating new field of rocketry, both are excited and ambitious about their project. There's just one problem...the two of them are expected to get along.

* * *

It was difficult to realize that there were places and times where one would never blend in, but even worse were the times when one did happen to fit the mold. He probably looked like a sixteen-year old punk, Edward Elric thought sourly as he stormed through the alleyway, sending street people diving to either side for cover, the irony only catching up to nip his heels a moment later.

Of course he looked like a punk, he _was_ sixteen and furious with his fists balled and ready to whale on someone, which was why these nameless people were avoiding his gaze, hoping they would not be the ones to earn this dangerous young man's wrath. A diminutive, dark-haired woman stepped to one side hastily as he exploded out from the mouth of the alley onto the street at large, and her eyes on him were instantly terrified, as if she expected him to punch her any second. What nonsense, he thought, and the tight ball of anger burning in his stomach intensified until he realized that his annoyance was probably making things worse. Her shoulders slouched down at the rigid, trembling line of his body, and he felt guilty as she practically dove into the alley just to get away from him.

Ed turned the corner sharply and marched directly to the little out-back lot, a patch of land directly behind the complex of warehouses where their project was housed. The University of Munich made its own peculiar footprint on the city, and like most campuses he'd seen in his life it was forever running out of room for itself. Whenever it did, like the giant, sprawling organism it was, the campus reached out feelers and ate into the surrounding city -- low-rent areas first, sometimes stray warehouses or houses that would be used in their current form until money was found for them to be renovated. The building the physics department had currently annexed for "special projects" was right flush against a ghetto, and not one street behind it was an entirely residential district - complete with street life, green grocers, and a weedy vacant lot where a house fire had burned someone's residence to the ground. As of yet, the area was too poor for anyone to rebuild there.

He stepped away from the busy street and walked through the blighted ruin of what had once been someone's dream, into the shade of the house's one remaining brick wall that had not yet been razed to ground. The little patch of charred earth smelt more like vegetables and refuse than smoke, probably courtesy of the housing complex next door. A bit like piss as well, like the rest of this lousy, hateful world. He couldn't see Alfons, but he could hear the man's breath hissing like an angry cat in the darkness, and he squeezed his fists tighter, waiting.

"Well?" Ed called out, trying to keep his voice steady and even, though inside every last nerve was awake and jangling.

"You called me out here? I came!" He shifted from side to side, trying to see just where Alfons was at. Fuck, he wished his Drachman were better. He was aware he probably sounded like an idiot sometimes, but no one had ever told him in school that their country's most common foreign language would some day be useful in a mirror-universe. Just another nasty trick in this nightmare the Gate had sprung upon him.

"I noticed," a breathy tenor called back. "I'm surprised you did."

And then the worst surprise of any he'd found here, the part which sometimes made him doubt he'd escaped the Gate's trickery at all. Alfons Heiderich, this universe's most cruel mistake, came round from the other side of the crumbling brick wall, and Ed found himself again wondering if the man existed solely for his personal torment. Fifteen and pale, with a name and sweetheart's face that reminded him heartbreakingly of Al -- and a viper's tongue and a demon's heart, and an ego the size of a small country.

Ed's temper flared and he shifted his stance, trying to find a better footing to properly brace himself. Some days it seemed like it never stopped raining in Munich, and the past week had certainly taken its toll on this unfinished back lot. Mud squelched underfoot and his prosthetic foot wobbled in unnatural ways. He resisted the temptation to look down and check it, because that might betray his weakness. He had made the mistake of letting Alfons find out that his left leg was prosthetic, but not its level of mobility.

That had been the first black mark against the man, actually. Since sometimes he walked with an unavoidable limp, the research group had asked if he was in some way lame, and Edward had done the noble thing and owned up that yes, it was actually missing, but with his false one, he could walk reasonably well. That had been his first, and in some ways, most brutal wake-up call to the realities of this place. He had known of people who were disturbed by automail, yes, but never had he seen such open disgust. For the brief moment he'd pulled his pants-leg up, the entire research group had curled their collective lip, and he had transformed in an instant from a living, sentient being into a walking piece of scum.

"Is that...a war injury?" the Frenchman who looked like Havoc (another cruel trick!) had finally asked, and that was what had clued him in that there was something greater going on than simple automail aversion.

_This country was at war,_ he remembered the Old Bastard telling him, from the very instant they set foot in greater Munich. _They ended up on the wrong side of it. Speak Drachman if you can, avoid using your Amestrisian--English. If you have to be any nationality, best to be American. You don't want them to think that you're English._

Not good for them to think he might have fought for the wrong side.

"No, hell no, I was too young to fight, you guys should know that," he had said after a moment's hesitation, "this is an old injury from when I was a child. I got my leg dragged beneath a street car."

An outlandish lie, but if there was one thing he'd learned, a tall tale always got the focus off the matter at hand. He'd made up a story, wowing the rest of the group with his impression of the sound of the engine, the red-hot agony of what it was like to suddenly and traumatically have your leg severed at the thigh, his thigh muscles reflexively twitching and clamping as he shrieked (which was, of course, the only reason he was alive, true story - muscles spasming to seal off the artery). He did it well, he felt, because he actually did know what it was like to watch his own flesh be mangled, and the feeling of his own blood dripping hot over his hand -- that he would not forget in a thousand lifetimes of murderers, homunculi, or alchemical fights. The others had listened politely, occasionally cried out in sympathy or disgust, and by the end offered him a fag for his effort in entertaining them.

And Alfons's eyes, unamused and glinting, like twin pieces of ice, had not believed him one bit.

He was wearing that expression now, along with that arrogant little sneer he never seemed to lose, and Ed had to remind himself that no matter what, he couldn't lose it and throw the first punch here. Alfons had challenged him to "take it outside", and so he would, but he also knew that he could beat the ever-loving shit out of this idiot. And as much as that thought pleased him, he also had to think ahead. Alfons was an arrogant asshole, yes, but he was also the head honcho of the group that had so far been his only in-road into actual work in the field he was interested in. Theoretical research was all fine and good, but if he was ever to find a way to break out of this world -- if he was ever to transcend the barrier between this nightmare and his real brother, one who was hopefully sane and whole and would never look at him with that cold light in his eyes -- he needed people interested in practical experiments, too.

Keeping that in mind, he forced himself to cross his arms in front of him, making it look like he wasn't imminently ready to punch Alfons into next Tuesday.

"This is utterly childish, you know," he said, meeting Alfons's flinty gaze. "We're adults, why should we be fighting?"

"If it's so pointless, why did you follow me out here?" Alfons retorted, breezily putting an end to any claims Edward had at a moral high ground. "And it sure took you long enough. I was just about to leave."

"Yeah? I took the alley," Ed ground out. "Why, how'd you get here?" No doubt the bastard knew some smarter, faster shortcut. Any time Alfons could find some way in which Ed was wrong, or his science questionable, he couldn't resist pointing it out. He never harped on any of the other men like that, and it had quickly started to get to Ed. He had been nothing but charitable to the man -- even despite the fact that irrationally, he felt as though Alfons had somehow stolen his brother's face -- but Alfons repaid him with passive-aggressive bullshit. When he'd asked what Alfons's problem was with him, the man had claimed that there was none. It was starting to get old.

As predicted, Alfons was once waiting to prove him wrong. "Try the back door to the shop next time," he said. "It leads right here. Unless you went running to Daddy Dearest for help?"

Red flared in front of Ed's eyes and he seethed for a moment before he recognized that was exactly what Alfons was after, him losing control. He determined he wouldn't take the bait. "That has to be the lamest cheap shot in the book. My father has nothing to do with this, and I don't give a shit if you insult him or not," he replied in a curt tone.

Realization dawned.

"Why, is that your problem? My father?"

Alfons said nothing, but Ed thought he saw a twitch in the man's eyes that betrayed him. Typical, he thought in disgust. He had been to all four corners of the civilized world, right up to the frozen tundras of Drachma and the borders of the Eastern Desert, and so far no matter how far he roamed, he'd discovered that money and power -- and the petty jealousies they inspired -- worked the same way everywhere. Apparently the principle held even in foreign universes.

"I don't know what you've heard, but my father didn't pay off the department head to get them to accept me," he said. It was skirting the truth. His father's current identity, "Phillipe Bombast von Hohenheim", held great prestige among certain academic circles in this universe. They hadn't had to pay because the headmaster of physics had been too star struck by his father's name. 'Of course' they would extend an invitation to 'the venerable sir's' child, and it was not at all a problem that Ed's education 'had been disrupted by the war'. Ed had been uncomfortable with the situation himself, but he'd had enough experience with snooty academic types to know that one did not look gift horse in the mouth, nor turn down a free library pass.

He had asked the old bastard later just how the hell he had managed to do that -- how the hell he even knew so much about this place, but Hohenheim as always had only given him a mysterious, infuriating little smile. Ed personally suspected the man had been here before, and that thought as always brought up a nasty riot of feelings. That his father had abandoned them to gallivant in this pale shadow-world -- or perhaps, been a hapless prisoner here while Ed imagined that he had abandoned them -- it caused Ed's guts to twist, and did not improve his mood one bit.

His glare intensified, until it felt like he was seeing the world through slits.

Alfons faltered for a moment, perhaps intimidated by Ed's obvious increase in anger, but then rallied. He drew himself up and tossed his shaggy mop of hair back out of his eyes with one quick flip of his head. That particular gesture was what always prefaced him saying something utterly arrogant, and naturally also made Ed wonder if, despite the name, Alfons was really a false Russell Tringham. The theory was appealing, except that Russell had proved he wasn't actually a complete waste of space.

"Interesting," Alfons said haughtily. His voice practically dripped with condescension. "For the record, I've never actually heard anyone _say_ that your father bought your way into the university - but you're right, one can't help but wonder. How did you pass the entrance exams? Or do they give half-points for saying 'table salt' and 'silver spoons' gets you silver chloride?"

Ed gritted his teeth. He had suspected Alfons was going to pull out something like that. Trust the demonic little prick to remember each and every time he ever slipped up and reverted to Amestrian alchemy. In Amestris, it was possible to take a compound which had the desired elements in it, then extract what was necessary without tinkering with solutions or worrying about state changes. Here, he couldn't just extract oxygen from the air, or carbon from the earth. It was fucking annoying.

_If this were the_ real _world, I could show you how things are done,_ he snarled internally._ I could transmute that fucking smile right off your face!_ Not that he would, of course, decomposing flesh was a horror he never wanted to do again - to humans or homunculi - but he figured he could achieve the same effect if he transmuted the straps of those insufferable suspenders into lint. For reasons unbeknownst to those with a sense of fashion (or working eyes), people here all ran around with straps over their shoulders to hold their pants up. And Alfons in particular had the habit of hooking his thumbs beneath his when he was going on about how Ed was Wrong about something, which endeared them to Ed even less.

Ed watched with increasing frustration as Alfons hooked a thumb beneath his suspender strap, just below his collar bone.

"Or perhaps the dean was impressed by your suggestions we 'just liquefy some oxygen, the air has plenty of it'?" the man said, continuing on his earlier litany. "Yeah, let me go out to the store and pick some liquid oxygen up, I mean, air is everywhere, why doesn't everybody have tanks of hydrogen and oxygen?"

"I was implying we should invest in a Liebig condenser," Ed hissed.

"You didn't even know the name for it," Alfons retorted. "No, you just assumed there was some magic device out there that would do the job, I guess. That's what you always do, you just throw these crazy ideas out without the slightest clue how you're going to realize them!"

"Yeah well, it's called brainstorming," Ed sputtered in response, his hackles rising. "Some innovator you are if you can't even come up with anything new. Is that why you're so married to gasoline for the fuel system? Cause I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's a shitty choice and you need something better!"

Alfons's pale ears visibly reddened. Ed smirked in satisfaction. That was one of the few good things about the man. He was an excellent debater until he got flustered, and when he did, it was immediately obvious.

"A-as if you've come up with something better!" Alfons said lamely. "Damn it, this is just what you always do! You say something doesn't work, well, what do you have to offer!? Nothing! You sit there and complain that Einstein's full of shit, well, go on, why don't you disprove him!"

And back to what had started this whole argument in the first place, and well, damn it all Alfons had a point. Ed knew this world's view of science was off because damn it, he had come from a place where things functioned fundamentally differently. He had _seen_ the Gate, felt its deathly touch on his body, and he knew that there was more out there than these ignorant people knew.

He had also been warned many, many times already never to reveal such knowledge -- for fear that he would be mistaken as stark raving mad.

Alfons flipped his hair back again, looking triumphant, and Ed forced himself not to fly at the man. It was just all so fucking unfair.

"See? You can't, can you? Then don't even make that claim! Einstein is brilliant man, I will not ever have you speak ill of him! I have had it with this shit!"

The same Einstein whom others in the research group often made fun of for some of the same ideas, or his crazy demeanor, or for being the wrong ethnicity, and Alfons never batted an eye. Frustration reached a boiling point, and Ed made his decision. It would be suicide academically for him to punch his project leader's lights out - unless he could taunt the bastard into taking a swing first. The one good thing about Alfons's giant ego was, he was relatively certain that if Alfons threw first and lost he would be so demoralized he wouldn't want to tell anyone.

"Okay then, fine!" Ed spread his arms out wide, leaving himself superficially vulnerable and open to attack, though his stance was still solid and he was more than capable of fending off frontal attack. "You've had it with me, I've had it with you - then let's finish this already. Go ahead, I know you're dying to take a swing at me. That's why you called me out here, isn't it?"

Alfons's eyes widened a bit and he started forward. Ed could tell he was tempted. He paused, though.

"I called you out here," Alfons said stiffly, "so we could continue this discussion without bothering everyone else."

"Bullshit," Ed said. He spat on the ground between them. "You said we should 'take it outside' when you tried shove me off my stool and then you couldn't even do that. What do you have for arms, pencils?"

Alfons's ears reddened further. His blood pressure must be going up. "You misunderstand! I thought we could use some fresh air, I was--"

"Stalling, that's what! You know I could kick your ass and you didn't want the guys to know!" Important to seed that idea, let it germinate before they actually got down to it. Ed danced back and forth a bit, in a strange way relieved. This, at least, this sort of conflict he knew how to manipulate. Not passive-aggressive sniping, stupid constant double-standards. Just his fists, and Alfons's fists, and maybe if he won this one fight now, he wouldn't have to fight on a smaller scale every damned day.

Once they established the order of things, maybe Alfons would stop being such a prick and let him do the research he was here to do, so he could get on home and out of this nightmare, away from that sweet Alphonse-face worn by an impostor.

Alfons's expression was right now an ugly sneer, and there was nothing sweet about his voice either. He looked pointedly down at Ed's left leg.

"I was trying to say that I was _not_ about to start a fight with someone who obviously can't fight back," the man said.

Ed knew he was being baited but he couldn't help feeling actually insulted at that.

"I don't need a leg to punch you," Ed pointed out. "Do you honestly think I'm something less because of my leg?!" And Alfons didn't even know about the arm, he remembered in a sudden fit of paranoia. He resolved only to touch the man with his left arm, even though it was his non-dominant. It was one thing to explain away a false leg, in a place where war veterans had stick legs and peg legs. It was quite another to explain a fully functional prosthetic hand, shoulder, and elbow.

Alfons reared his head back. "Well yes technically, volumetrics-wise, you are less of a person," he said. "It's too bad they didn't amputate your ego along with your limb."

He almost lost it and decked the man right then and there, but Ed reined his fury in - barely. He went in for the verbal kill instead.

"Strong words, for a man who can't even topple a cripple from a chair," Ed taunted, keeping his arms spread out to either side, making himself a nice, easy target. "And I'm missing my leg, but at least I've got my brain. What part of yours did they amputate to make you think regular petrol would work for staging a rocket?"

Alfons was starting to tremble, and that was when he knew he had him. Ed tensed himself and waited.

"It's never going to fly," he said. "You like people to think you're so brilliant, but you would be nothing without our help."

That was when Alfons flew at him.

In truth it turned out to be kind of disappointing. He certainly knew from their earlier scuffle in the laboratory that Alfons was not terribly gifted in the strength department, but he had expected from Alfons's longer legs that the man might at least be speedy. Apparently that was too much to ask. It was child's play to catch Alfons's outstretched arm as the man swung his fist inexpertly at him, and a mere second later Ed had a tight enough grip on Alfons's arm to flip him over his shoulder, using Alfons's own charge against him. There was a resounding squelch-thud as Alfons landed behind him, flat on his back in the mud, and Ed spun on his heel to stare down at the winded, utterly confused-looking man.

"How'd you like that 'practical application'?" he said triumphantly. "Momentum, it's not just for ballistics any more." He scuffed mud at Alfons's shoulder. "Don't think you know everything, cause you don't. I may be missing a leg but I can still kick your ass, and I may have some holes in my knowledge base but I can still do some damn good chemistry. I'm good at it and it's what I came to do, so just shut up and let me do my job, okay?"

Alfons said nothing, didn't even move a muscle to get up - not that Ed was particularly surprised. Bastard was likely too embarrassed to say anything. He waited a minute before he finally turned around and began heading north back toward the warehouse (and hopefully, this time, to find the fabled back door Alfons claimed existed so he wouldn't have to go around). Alfons could lie there in the mud and stew about how he just got his ass handed to him, and then hopefully by the time he saw fit to rejoin everyone, he'd be a bit more humble about criticizing Ed all the damn time. Well, at the very least, he'd be too embarrassed too. Ed knew Alfons and his ilk. Guys like that never quit, they could only hope to be suppressed.

Something cold and wet smacked him suddenly in the small of the back, and Ed wheeled around on his heel, amazed to discover that apparently, guys like this didn't know when they were being suppressed, either.

"What the--" was all he had time to say before a second volley of what proved to be mud splattered across his chest, all across his white button-up shirt. His _only_ shirt, the one he needed to wear to the university every day, and here he could not just transmute the filth out.

Alfons was turned around and facing him, sitting up on one knee. He had a fistful of mud in each hand, and his expression said he was ready to use it.

"What the fuck!" Ed shrieked as another glob of mud came flying in his general direction. He side-stepped the mess, but Alfons chucked a second handful almost immediately, and that caught Ed square in the thigh.

"Ballistics," Alfons said, snarling at him. "You were talking practical applications."

Ed watched in horror as the man reached down to scoop up another big handful of mud, aimed it directly at Ed's other pants-leg.

"Fuck no, stop that!" Ed complained. He managed to dodge that shot but Alfons was persistent. "These are the only clothes I have!" He didn't want to think about the logistics of cleaning them as it was. Without alchemy...he supposed he could use a solution of sodium hypochlorite for the shirt, but that would take all the color out of his pants, and he was loathe to consider asking his father to buy him new ones.

"You muddied mine," Alfons pointed out and dragged his fingers through the dirt once more.

Ed had no choice but to dart forward and shove Alfons over sideways, back into the mud that he was so enamored of.

"You attacked me first, you dick," Ed pointed out. "After pretending to be so noble, not wanting to hurt 'a cripple'."

Alfons glared up at him. There was a thick streak of mud caked along one side of his face now, making him look less like a university student and more like the monster in a matinee creature-feature. "I thought you wanted me to treat you as an equal?"

"No, like a fellow man, not a five-year-old," Ed snorted at Alfons's muddy face. "Who the fuck throws mud in a fight? You look like the clay monster from _Der Golem_."

He couldn't see Alfons's right ear under all that mud, but he could see the left one as it turned nearly purple with rage.

"Try again when you've grown up," Ed said dismissively, ready to go home and look for the wash basin, and that was when Alfons lunged forward and tackled his prosthetic leg, hooking his arm around the back of the knee and pulling the joint forward.

Superiority turned to panic and Ed acted on reflex. His plastic prosthesises were nowhere near as sturdy as regular automail, and his mind was filled with the sudden terror, _what if it breaks_!? His father had said he was working on more, but he'd still have to crawl home, and what if he was suddenly without his mobility? Nameless horror swept over him and he brought his elbow down hard into the middle of Alfons's back, not at all remembering to pull his punches.

Alfons howled and released him. He fell face down at Ed's feet, sprawled again in the dirt.

"Don't do that," Ed hissed. He took a careful step backward with his prosthetic, gingerly testing to make sure the knee was even still functional. Thankfully it seemed to hold. "Don't you ever dare do that, what on earth were you thinking -"

The man-come-mud monster before him bellowed with rage and came rushing at him once more, arms out-stretched like he was trying to envelop Ed with his filth.

Ed cocked his fist back and let Alfons have it, right up-side the jaw, hard enough to send him spinning back to earth.

_Couldhavelostmyleg fuckerattackedmyleg thatwasclose_...

He trembled a little, trying to get a hold of himself. When Alfons started to push up on his knees, he kicked him solidly in the ass and Alfons tumbled right back down.

This time, the man did not get up.

Ed circled his fallen rival for a moment, wary. Alfons had tricked him twice now by playing 'dead', to his great chagrin, and he didn't want yet another repeat. After the third or fourth orbit, however, it dawned on him something might be wrong.

"You okay?" he asked hesitantly, leaning down to touch the man's quivering shoulder. Alfons's face was turned away from him, and he shrugged Ed's hand off quite pointedly.

"Alfons?"

Worried that perhaps he'd somehow seriously hurt the other man, Ed forcibly jerked Alfons toward him, rolling him over onto his back. Alfons's arms flew up to cover his face immediately, but not before Ed saw the glimmer of tears at the corner of Alfons's eyes.

Alfons scrubbed at his eyes furiously, smearing even more mud across his nose and cheeks, and then he sat up and pulled away from Ed bodily. His face contorted with rage.

"I hate you so much," the man hissed, before shoving himself to his feet and storming away. He seemed to weave a little as he went, or perhaps that was just Ed's imagination.

"Oh really now? Hate is such a strong word," Ed called after him, snide on the surface. Inwardly, he wasn't sure how he felt. Adrenaline was still singing its siren-song through his veins encouraging him to fight, or fuck, or flee. Part of him wanted to gloat uncontrollably, he had sent his rival packing with his tail between his legs.

Another part of him was starting to feel profoundly guilty, because not only had he sent his rival packing, he had humiliated and shamed him, rather more than he'd intended.

Ed brushed the mud off his front the best he could and turned, headed back out to the street and off toward home. Fuck it, he could worry later. Alfons wasn't dead, he didn't have any broken bones, the only lasting damage was to the man's bloated ego, and hadn't he meant to take the bastard down a peg? Alfons had gotten what he deserved. Nothing more, nothing less.

Hadn't he?

* * *

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	2. The Seed of the Fire

Warnings: Increasingly dark (no character death). The one note I have here is that, in case it isn't glaringly obvious already – Ed is a very biased observer here ;) Keep that in mind, it may help.

* * *

It was not without a certain amount of trepidation that Ed returned to Special Projects Building Twenty-one the next morning, his heart in his throat and his stomach in his shoes. He'd had a night to think on it, and as the ache in his bruising knuckles had spread, so had the awareness that he'd done something unforgivable. Not that he cared what Alfons Heiderich thought of him - the man was a child and a petty, arrogant sot - but he himself should have known better than to take the fight that hard, that far. If Alfons did choose to complain (and that chance, although slight, was still greater than zero), Ed would likely also lose face. Oberth, the junior adviser whom their group looked to, frowned upon 'barbarism', his loose word for fighting, gambling, and any other activities that took focus away from work that had to be accomplished. And he had known that going into the fight, Ed despaired later, and it had been by his will that the fight had existed in the first place. Alfons had been the one to ask for it, yes -- and boy, had he ever been _asking_ for it -- but he had been the one to manipulate the man, snipe at his ego; draw his proverbial quarry straight into the trap and then suddenly and decisively bring the jaws shut tight around its neck. It had been by his hand, ultimately, that the incident had ended the way it did, and upon reflection, Ed had realized the awful truth.

For those seconds of fleeting pleasure in punishing the bastard, Ed had lost sight of his overall _goal_ - and that was absolutely unacceptable.

He slunk in through the side door and picked his way through the honeycomb of saw-horse barriers that sectioned the space, past strange machines and projects that other students were already hard at work on, despite how early in the morning it was. He was still wearing his brown wool outer coat, and he tugged it a little tighter across his chest as he approached their lab space, as if that would somehow make him less visible. It didn't, of course. Sometimes Ed felt like he were the only bright spot in this world of dull browns and grays, and in a way it was true. His bright hair and eyes stood out like a beacon, no matter what camouflage he tried to bury himself in.

A few of the others raised their heads as he stepped carefully into their protective ring of boards and machinery. Not everyone had gathered yet, he noted in an instant, just the few other early birds who were always here right at opening. The engine prototype - the most important thing, the most secret of all the experiments they were working on - was sectioned off from the outside world by a mishmash of tarps, a little insurance against any prying eyes; it had yet to be uncovered for the day. To the left of that was a high table they had co-opted from the university to lay out their schematics. Alfons Heiderich was sitting on his usual stool there, hunched over the table sketching something furiously.

He did not look up.

"Morning, Edward," the Frenchman called out, waving to Ed from the other side of the table. He was chewing on the end of an unlit cigarette like usual, his panacea until mid-morning smoke break: a familiar sight that was by equal parts comforting and disturbing. He could have been Havoc's twin.

"Morning," Ed called back to Jean, still keeping his eyes fixed solidly on Alfons. It seemed the man was solidly ignoring him. He stiffened a little when Havoc mentioned Ed's name, but otherwise he did not so much as twitch. There was a nasty swelling up one side of his jaw and a dark knuckle-shaped bruise at the center where Ed's fist had landed, only just beginning to yellow.

_That's got to hurt,_ Ed considered, examining his handiwork from a careful distance. It was obscurely good to know that the ache in his knuckles had not been for nothing. Still, a part of him was concerned. Teaching the bastard a lesson had been momentary fun, but the long term effect on their working relationship was as of yet unknown. _Would_ Alfons behave the way he expected? Ed liked to pride himself on knowing how to handle people, but there was always that chance, that non-zero chance, that something would not go as he forecast.

That chance that he never should have taken, but he couldn't go back now. There was only moving forward.

"Good morning," he tried saying to Alfons, testing the waters like a bather paranoid of sharks. If there was going to be fall out from what had happened yesterday, best he ascertain that now before the work day started. He didn't want to have to apologize, but just in case he had prepared an acceptable boiler-plate speech. He'd had enough experience lying (mostly to the Colonel, occasionally to angry mobs) that he figured he could fake 'contrite.'

"And how are you today, Alfons?"

Alfons's pencil jagged sharply to the right over the blueprint he was working on, but other than that, there was no response. Ed watched as Alfons sucked in deep, long breaths through his nose, once, twice, three times. Then he slowly and silently set down his pencil and reached for an eraser, started rubbing out the thick line he had made across the page.

That was all.

_Fine,_ Ed thought, briefly cross at not being able to elicit a real reaction. The silent treatment. Okay, fine, he could handle that. In some ways, it was actually for the best. If Alfons was refusing to speak to him, then perhaps he would also go a day without criticizing him for once, and maybe Ed could concentrate on getting real work done.

Also, it meant Alfons had likely not told anyone. If Ed were in some kind of trouble with Oberth or a dean, he could be sure to count on Alfons to rub his nose in it. The fact that the man hadn't… Ed's smile widened.

Thus satisfied, he went to take his own seat, a slightly taller stool that sat at the corner diametrically opposed to Alfons. He shucked off his coat and tossed it down on the floor beside the table, and grabbed a pen and paper to sketch out more of the distillation task he had been given to work on. The Frenchman ambled up to take the seat beside him, and they all began doodling in earnest, the same as they did every morning.

Periodically Ed could feel Alfons's eyes on him, but as Alfons continued to say nothing, he didn't let it bother him.

He had taken a chance, and apparently won.

Eventually the full project team made it in to the lab, and that was when the joshing began. When it had just been him and the Frenchman at the design table, no one had dared to comment on Alfons's ugly swollen cheek, not with Alfons's sky-pale eyes so stormy, his expression like the promise of thunder. Once Dorchett and Lars in particular joined them, however, there were no end of jokes at Alfons's expense.

"What happened, you cop a feel off someone's old lady?"

"Did her man take after you? Or did she just get ya with her purse?"

The two of them together reminded Ed a bit of a pair of hyenas. Lars was large and thick all over, a great big ox of a man; Dorchett was the opposite, small and wiry with narrow, pointed eyebrows, but both of them had a vicious sense of humor. They were quick to attack any time they sensed weakness.

"C'mon, you can't expect us to believe you ran into a door."

Ed watched as Alfons's ears turned progressively darker, the man visibly growing more and more agitated as his colleagues speculated on whom or what had laid Alfons out. Apparently Alfons's weakness was a known thing among the group - or perhaps his lack of a story had tipped them off. They all assumed that Alfons was the one who had come off worst in his mysterious battle, and everyone wanted to know what he had done to 'get his ass handed to him'.

"We have work to do," was all Alfons would reply, though his expression grew more and more murderous.

Ed listened to the snickering and bit down on the end of his pencil, worrying his teeth into the soft wood.

_He deserved what he got,_ he told himself again firmly. He'd spent the night thinking about it, and damn it, it was fact. Alfons had been a grade-A asshole. Ed couldn't stand putting up with his behavior. He could regret his loss of control – shouldn't have hit him so hard, should have found another way to deal with it – but he couldn't regret standing up for himself. He couldn't.

And bruises faded, after all. Hopefully, Alfons would just learn his damn lesson, and they could put this whole ugly incident behind them.

He realized the Frenchman was trying to look over at his paper, and Ed started to realize he hadn't done anything in the past ten minutes. Ed flushed a little, chagrined, and went back to the vexing task of balancing equations related to refining fuel. The science of 'chemistry', he sometimes considered, wasted even more paper than even traditional array-based alchemy. So much that had to be done first in theory. It was so frustrating, sometimes, to think that what would be so easy with alchemy was so impossible the way these people did it. Combustion reaction, if they wanted combustion reactions all he'd had to do was set fire to the air. Separate out the oxygen into one stream, hydrogen from ambient humidity into another; those two together could make this baby _soar_. To say nothing of the more exotic fuel possibilities. He was fairly certain that lithium, lithium would give them thrust these poor fools could only dream of, but here it would be impossible to work with in liquid form – it was highly corrosive and would take tremendous heat.

_Did you know I used to be able to do miracles?_ he nearly said to the Frenchman, as Jean looked over the piddling advances he'd made. Once, he could have clapped his hands, and they would have had all the low-octane petrol they liked. Hell, they wouldn't need it.

"What, lithium again?" Jean asked, pointing to the structure Ed had unwittingly just sketched in the margins of his page. Ed colored a bit, embarrassed to be caught doodling.

"Yeah," he said blithely, as if he had meant to do that. Sometimes his pencil just moved with his thoughts, and then he had to deal with explaining them. "Or fluorine. Maybe both at once. Stuff of your wet dreams, those two together," he said, eying Alfons obliquely. The nerd _would_ get off on stuff like that, he considered snidely, and crude expressions always pissed him off. Perfect combination.

He probably shouldn't bait the man, but just being – written _off_ like that - it bugged him. He'd thought he wanted Alfons's silence, but at the same time…

It was the waiting that was getting to him, he decided. Silence meant that Alfons was still stewing, the situation was still bubbling, and until he was sure how it was going to turn out, he wouldn't be able to really relax.

"Or compounds with hydrazine, that could be good, just throw in another hydrogen or two - "

"If we're going to talk _fantasy_, how about one in which you can keep your mouth shut?" Alfons growled suddenly. "Unlike some people, I am trying to work here! Chit-chat somewhere else."

Ed might have been annoyed at that, except that well, he'd invited it. He was pleased to note though, that Alfons stopped there. He did not rail any further about Ed's "completely impractical theoretics" and went right back to whatever it was he was doing with that straight-edge. Experiment succeeded, Ed considered, and felt immeasurably heartened.

Normally, a comment like that would have gotten them into a half-hour argument about the many ways in which Ed's suggestion was completely impossible, just in case anyone didn't realize Alfons was smart enough to disprove him. Lingering guilt about punching the man or no, all signs certainly pointed to Alfons's behavior shaping up for the better now.

The rest of the project team didn't seem to think so, however.

"Wow...damn, what do you think's eating him?" the Frenchman asked him later, out front by the loading zone on mid-morning smoke break. They had gone out together to kill two birds with one stone – check for any deliveries and share a cigarette.

"Who knows," Ed lied. A part of him would deeply love to join the man in 'speculating' – particularly if it involved discussing Alfons's up-tight character, and how many continents his ego encompassed - but that would be taking another risk he couldn't afford himself. If it got back to Alfons that Ed was putting him down, it might upset the delicate truce they seemed to have right now. The man was so touchy about being criticized, honestly, he needed to just learn when he was wrong and be done with it.

He wouldn't have had to knock sense into him, Ed told himself, if Alfons had just been born with some like regular people.

"Not really worth discussing, I think. I mean, c'mon. Could be anything, knowing him," Ed said sagely, and Jean reluctantly nodded. His eyes were very sharp all of a sudden, it seemed, and Ed felt more than a little uncomfortable under his gaze.

"I suppose," the Frenchman said at length. He sighed and pulled out his match tin and cigarette box, tucked the cig he was currently chewing on back behind his ear, and pulled out a fresh one. It was one of Jean's habits, Ed had learned, that the cig he smoked was never the same as the one he used as a pacifier – more expensive, but in some ways less wasteful in the long run. By the time he got done with a particularly stressful set of ballistics equations, his cig-sucker would be half-chewed and wet. If he did that to every cig in the box, he'd only ever get to smoke the ends. Best to keep just one to gnaw on, he'd said, and keep the "mouth piece" around until it was literally chewed to ribbons. Ed thought that was a bit disgusting, but hey. He had once had a loose wire in his automail that he twirled on trains when he was bored, and Al had always chided him for getting his hands so oily.

Thinking of Al in this situation only made his heart twist worse when Jean proceeded with a ritual that was all-too familiar. The Frenchman struck a cigarette on the side of the building and then lit the cig with a little flourish of his hand that Ed had seen a thousand times before – the way the real Jean Havoc worked his smokes, when the Colonel wasn't around to give him a snap-light.

Ed eyed him warily as Jean slipped the thing casually into the corner of his mouth, again the mirror image of his real world counterpart. As if his face weren't bad enough...his vices, his mannerisms, why did _all_ of it have to be the same?

_I hate this place so much,_ he thought desperately.

Sometimes, he wondered if this might not be his punishment…the price he had to pay for simply being alive.

"...you want one or something?" the Frenchman asked, a slight frown at the corner of his lips. Ed started. He supposed he must be staring.

"No," Ed said. He swallowed thickly. "Don't have any sandwiches to trade today, sorry." Usually, he brought his lunch (_or his father tried to make one for him, a horror he hoped would never happen again_), but this morning he had been so worn down and anxious about the upcoming day that he had clean forgotten. It did not help his mood.

"'s okay, I don't mind sharing the one I've got going," Jean said. His eyes were still unusually bright, Ed thought. It was unsettling. Jean pulled the cig away from his mouth and Ed reached out to grab it, eager suddenly for a calming drag. The bastard Colonel had never let Havoc give him smokes back home in Amestris, and in retrospect Ed wished he hadn't respected the man's wishes and obeyed. Smoking was expensive, but it sure did wonders for the nerves.

The Frenchman grabbed his hand.

Ed's eyes widened as he stared down at the exact same thing Jean was looking at, then looked up helplessly into piercing blue eyes. _Stupid_, he berated himself, _stupid stupid stupid._

He had reached out with his flesh hand out of habit, the one with bruised knuckles, and it was clear now that Jean had put two and two together.

"I thought as much," the Frenchman said. He sounded…disgusted, which was unexpected and more than a little upsetting.

"I saw you two leave yesterday. Neither of you came back after that argument, so I figured something had to be up. But this…"

He released Ed's hand as though it were covered in worse than just spots of engine grease.

_That's what I did,_ Ed realized belatedly. He must have stripped off his glove when they went to take the tarps off the rocket engine, old fussy habit about getting white cloth dirty. Paranoia took him for a moment and he looked quickly down at his other – the glove covering his obviously mismatched prosthetic hand – but luckily it seemed he hadn't made the same mistake on that side. Old automail habit, he identified dryly, never taking the right glove off. At least that routine had served him well.

Jean took another long drag on his cigarette, and Ed looked down at the ground, not sure what to say.

"Look," the Frenchman said finally, through a thick puff of smoke, "I don't know what your problem is, okay? But there's some of us who wish you'd just be done with it already."

Ed had expected Jean not to be very sympathetic, but _his_ problem? _His_ problem? It was at least half as much Alfons's problem, if not more; Ed had been perfectly fine until Alfons had started making life difficult.

"H-he said we should take it outside," Ed said lamely, and then immediately wanted to take the words back. Stupid, again. He must sound like a petulant five-year-old, crying to Mommy - _he hit me first! He hit me first!_

He was letting the fact that this guy looked like Havoc get to him, he decided. Something about that friendly, easy-going face, suddenly stern and very disapproving…

_You used to call me 'boss',_ he wanted to wail all of a sudden, and the fact that he even had that urge made him want to recoil in horror.

Maybe he was tired too, he considered rather desperately. Maybe that would explain why he had taken leave of what he had once thought to be good senses.

"I know I'm not on the same level as you two boy wonders," the Frenchman said, taking another hard suck on his smoke-stick. Ed opened his mouth and Jean held up a hand, staying him. "And that's all right. But as long as I have to work with you, I'd appreciate it if you would at least try and keep the peace. All right? The way you two go at each other is like my old man and lady, and if I wanted to hear my parents fight I'd go back home for Christmas Mass."

He raised one bushy eyebrow and Ed, helpless, just stood there and stared.

"Alfons is a good guy, okay? You don't have to be so damn prickly with him."

"But he—I—" His brain had lost all ability to form words suddenly, and Ed's tongue twisted helplessly as he struggled to find some way to express the sheer, utter unfairness of it all. He knew it wasn't his imagination that Alfons picked on his ideas more often than any of the others. Alfons never got into debates defending Einstein's honor with any of the rest of the project members.

But it was true that given that evidence, it could also be inferred that just as Alfons had some bizarre problem with Ed, Ed's reactions implied he had an ax to grind against Alfons too. Which of course, he did – with good reason! The difference was, the rest couldn't see it, he realized with numb horror. Alfons had all these people on his side from the start. They likely never noticed all the animosity Alfons had sent to start this, because he was their friend. And if there was one thing Ed knew about friendship, it was that it quite often caused smart people to blind themselves to the most obvious things.

"Okay, _fine_," he ground out to the Frenchman. "I'll see if we can't get along better. Thanks for the smoke."

He left Jean there and slipped back into the warehouse, angry and hurt and feeling wound up somehow, his body full of nameless tension that had no name or foreseeable outlet. Jean's face and eyes, his voice…all disapproving…maybe it would be better if he stopped taking so many cigarette breaks with the man, Ed considered sourly. In fact, it was probably better he not associate too much with the Frenchman, anyway. Not just for his own sanity, but also because, cruel or not, Ed could see the writing on the wall. The 'Frenchman' was 'French' by heritage only; he'd had the poor luck to have a French merchant for a father, and even that seemed to be sin with Dorchett and Lars, some of the others who were big into politics. And Ed was not oblivious to group dynamics. It was obvious Jean was a low man on the proverbial totem pole, often left out of impromptu discussions. Some of the men looked at Jean's face askance sometimes, and seemed ill at ease with Ed's accent too. When these people had their own little smoke break conversations, often speaking of national pride and harmony, it was always clear that the two of them were not invited.

Ironically the only person who never seemed to give a damn - other than Oberth, who rarely had time to stop by and kibitz anyway - was Alfons the Hard-Ass. He would come out and urge them to get back to work, and generally be a bitch about it, but at least he was a bitch to everyone equally.

He really didn't want to think about that right now.

_I must be losing my fucking mind,_ he thought, scrubbing a hand back through his hair. He couldn't have just misinterpreted all this, could he? Fuck, he'd spent the first few weeks thinking it was just his imagination. But the trend had become more than evident by the time he'd started making a histogram, taking the data down had only served to prove it--

Of course, it occurred to him, the fact that he'd resorted to taking a histogram of all the times Alfons had slighted him, interrupted him, or challenged him versus anyone else, probably said he did have just an eensie little ax to grind.

He stormed back into the main research space in an ill humor and plopped down on his stool, muttering dark things under his breath. Alfons was still just where he'd left him, Ed noted, perched resolutely on his rickety stool, sketching things out in fine, even lines good enough to rival any master alchemist.

_Doesn't he ever take a smoke-break?_ Ed found himself wondering. _At all?_ The bastard was just too fucking _perfect_ sometimes, even when he knew Alfons wasn't – how many flaws had he spotted in Alfons's combustion chamber designs? Physics for firing things into the air was one thing, but the idiot needed to brush up on his thermodynamics if he was going to allow for the kind of forces they were dealing with from these reactions. And—

He was doing it again, Ed realized, now vaguely paranoid of even his own thought processes. What if this was somehow all just his own attitude problem? Ed bit down on his pencil hard enough to cut grooves in the side of the wood. More histograms, he decided. He could take more data – not just on Alfons's interactions with others, but his own – and see if there was a main effect of him starting arguments versus Alfons starting arguments. Maybe his previous study had been biased. Until then, he was just going to have to _chill_, as much as that irked him.

Alfons lifted his head and looked toward him, the very picture of cool confidence.

"Dorchett wanted your help with the condenser," Alfons said nonchalantly, then turned back to his work.

Ed's bowel's turned to ice.

Sure enough, when he turned around, there was Dorchett, fiddling with the distillation setup that was spread across a side table. They had been experimenting with a variety of different commercial-grade kerosenes for their liquid propellant, but so far none had proved quite as low octane as they would have liked. The lower the octane, the more readily the fuel would be to detonate, which was ideal for providing thrust to a rocket. Alfons and Ed had both agreed that if they could refine the stuff they had, it would be much better for the project.

That was not going to happen, though, if certain people _didn't stop messing with the samples Ed was experimenting on!_

"Hey hey hey whoa whoa whoa!" Ed said, rushing over in a panic. "What the hell are you doing?"

Dorchett jerked his head up, startled, and Ed groaned out loud to see that yes, it was exactly as he'd feared. As expected from the man, the little pin-head was busy screwing everything up. It wasn't enough that he'd obviously been fiddling with the condenser (_the Liebig that at one time, he had naively hoped might help him to distill oxygen in this stupid world where arrays couldn't just take care of everything_); the Bunsen burner that was heating the sample was now turned down too low.

"FUCK! You've got it all wrong," he snapped, absolutely furious, and shoved the interloper aside. "Let me do that. Fuck."

"The output beaker was full! I was trying to replace it. I was just trying to help --"

"Well, _don't_," Ed said, fury thick in his voice. "I've told you before, I've got this set exactly how I want it."

Dorchett shifted back and forth scratching his pointy little head, looking desperately unhappy, and Ed resisted the urge to snarl at him. Dammit, he was trying to be patient. It had been hard enough to figure out how to purify the pitiful ingredients this university provided without having to worry about people touching his equipment, people who didn't know what the fuck they were doing.

He looked at the beaker still in the receiving position and _did_ snarl at that. It was filled to the brim and distillate was still dripping into it – distillate that had been affected by Dorchett's changes, and now he couldn't say the sample had been adequately controlled the whole time, the parameters of the experiment had changed for an unknown part of the output.

"Do you realize what you just _did_?" he snapped. "I have to throw it out now, the whole sample is ruined! If you don't know what the fuck to do, learn to leave well enough alone!"

Damn, he missed working with Al. Al understood how to leave well enough alone, or if he did meddle with an experiment that Ed had left running, he knew how to be careful and not create more work. He bent down and began readjusting his equipment, cursing softly to himself at just how quickly Dorchett had managed to knock his setup out of whack.

A shadow fell across his shoulder, and Ed blinked up to see Alfons looming suddenly above him, his eyes hard and flinty, a great Disapproving Presence. Coming to Dorchett's rescue, no doubt; ready to complain Ed was being too hard on him. Ed resisted the urge to jump up and sock the man.

_You would be twice as hard on me if I pulled a stunt like that!_

"And just how is he supposed to know what he is and isn't to do? You were out on a _smoke-break_" – said as if 'break' were a dirty word, holier-than-thou bastard – "and he was just trying to help. Your sample would have been equally as ruined if it overflowed."

And as usual, the worst part about it was that Alfons was right. Ed gritted his teeth.

"He could have come and got me."

"Perhaps it would help if you could deign to explain your process to the rest of us poor, unwashed masses, instead," Alfons drolled. "We could avoid interrupting your experiments if only we knew what it was we were interrupting. I mean, for all we know you were pretending to distill hydrogen again."

Again, the insult hit true. Alfons's words rankled and Ed wanted nothing more than to give him a matching bruise on the other side of his face. Digging up ancient history again, mistakes Ed never would have made if he weren't just so damn _new_ in this world…

_I liked you better when you weren't speaking to me!_ Ed thought desperately, eyes darting from side to side. He was starting to feel hemmed in. He was aware of a gathering around him, of people slowly starting to circle around the table where the two of them stood, and their eyes all around made his heart yammer fast and furious in his throat.

What were they expecting him to do? Circles like these he had seen before, oh yes, but in grimy tavern bars or seedy parts of the city, where man fighting man was a common past-time. Surely they were not expecting a rematch! He wasn't concerned about laying Alfons out – he'd already proved he could do that with one hand – but this many other guys, who for all he knew might be liable to jump him the second that Alfons was down…he might be able to take them, but not without collateral damage. Ed looked nervously over at his precious distillation setup, remembering how hard it was to get the university to loan all this equipment in the first place. If Oberth, their advisor, found out he had wrecked it in a brawl…

He could kiss his hopes of working with this team -- any team – under Oberth goodbye. He would have to scratch everything and go back to square one.

He would be that much further from getting home to Al.

"I-I'm SORRY!" he squeaked, spreading his hands out quickly in a 'surrender' pose. "Here, I'll show you, whatever you want to know, I'll do it right now, just please—"

Alfons's smile was like a viper's, quietly deadly.

"Then show me," he said. "I want to know everything."

Alfons turned toward the burner and began asking questions about specific temperature, flask weight specifications, all the ins-and-outs in a perfectly calm voice. Ed nodded, still residually shaky, and turned to join him. Somehow, thankfully, it seemed the immediate crisis was averted. And Alfons might like to challenge him about Einstein and ballistics and the price of pasta in Rome, but he would be damned if Alfons could find a hole in his setup here. Ed lost himself quickly in the intricate details of his distillation experiments, explaining how this part and that part was used for a very specific part of the process, and what each and every last operating parameter was.

Something seemed…off, however, though he couldn't quite put his finger on it – something about the sound of Alfons's voice as he continued asking random questions. Ed had in truth almost entirely tuned him out at this point, immersed as he was in the details of his experiment. Something about his own voice…something wasn't right…

"And then you take this Dublith condenser—"

Dublith. Not Liebeg.

He had reverted to Amestrisian.

Ed froze, his fingers wrapped tightly around the cylindrical condenser tube.

"Well? Go on?" Alfons said, a wicked bent to his voice, and it was only then that Ed paid enough attention to realize that Alfons was speaking perfect Amestrisian – excuse him,_English_ - and fuck, everyone around was staring at them – at him – as if he had just grown a second head. It was worse than the time he had rolled his pants-leg up, it was like…like the stares poor Jean got when he joined the wrong people for lunch, only magnified times a thousand. Jean, Dorchett, Lars…Ed looked frantically back and forth between the people he knew, and they were all staring back at him with the most queerly blank expression on their faces, as if they weren't sure what to think.

"You absolute _bastard_," Ed snarled at Alfons. The man met him with a wintry glare, his eyes the very embodiment of icy chill.

"On the contrary," Alfons said, and this time Ed was aware of the shift into Drachman—German. He must have missed the change earlier because he was engrossed in shoptalk. "_You_ come into our lab, make demands of our time and equipment – no gratitude, no cares for our budget – say you want to be a team player, but you bully my colleagues and cause nothing but trouble."

He touched his bruised face, not without meaning. Ed felt his stomach sink into his shoes.

Alfons switched back into Amestrisian, a little sneer about his lip, as if the foreign words were distasteful.

"And all this, and you won't even be honest about who you are, or where you came from, and your father – as it is well known – was not here in this country during the Great War. There are those who claim he was in London, betraying the Fatherland. To be frank, there were those who didn't want you within a thousand meters of our great experiment. This project is for Germany, and our nation's greatness. They claimed you were a spy."

"I'm not a—"

"I don't care what you claim you are!" Alfons wheeled and his eyes were blazing, his cheeks flushed and angry. "I stuck up for you, I protected you, I agreed to take you on when all the other teams rejected you, and _this_ is how you repay me?!" He pawed at his swollen cheek again, as though it were a blight he could physically pull off and fling back at Ed. "I know what you are now. You are a bully and a brute, and I am through with you. Get out."

"But I—"

"Get. Out." Alfons's shoulders were quivering, whether in fear or rage Ed could not tell. He took a step forward and saw Lars immediately step in on the side in his peripheral vision - and Jean behind him, and Dorchett behind him. He felt his own hands begin trembling in rage. Did he realize—this could honestly ruin him—he might never see his brother _again_--

All the eyes were on him, Alfons's eyes were on him – those lying, stormy blue eyes; set in a face that resembled his brother's but he was now sure was nothing alike.

"Fine," Ed said, swallowing hard. "I understand. I see what I have to do."

He decked Alfons hard, directly over the line of the previous bruise with his unyielding prosthetic hand, and then he turned and fled.

* * *

If you enjoyed this, please review :) 


	3. I hear the electric shock

**Warnings in effect for this chapter**: mentions of ethnic tensions, both fictional and historical.

Responses to reviews at the end.

* * *

After the relative darkness of the warehouse, the afternoon sun was literally painful. Ed burst out through the heavy steel doors that separated the Special Projects Area from the bustle of the (theoretically) real world outside and spun out into the street, his mind and heart as foggy as his eyes.

For the first time in many years, Edward Elric considered crying.

It was not as if he hadn't been tempted in recent months, either. He had mourned when he first learned the horrible truth about what he and his brother had done to their mother. He had raged when Greed had died, at his sheer helplessness and inability to change the situation. He had wept on the inside when he and Al had killed their false mother, by doing so depriving another wretched boy of a parent. It was simply the first time he'd considered giving into the luxury. And even that wasn't _entirely_ true, because a dim, horrific memory lurking somewhere at the back of his mind (and always, always at the forefront of his nightmares) distinctly remembered feeling twin tracks of wetness on his cheeks, and a stinging in his eyes as he watched his brother disappear - sacrificing himself in the yellow, dead light of the Gate, that Ed, unworthy as he was, might have a chance to live.

_Al._

His brother's name lit up in his mind like a firework, and Ed felt absurd for even _considering_ crying, what good would that do Al - or him - and their goal of being together? His chest seized up now and again like his heart was being squeezed by a tight fist, but really, what could tears do to relieve that. Lacrimation was a natural process meant to lubricate the eye; tears were secretions formed from water and mucin and lipocalin and many other molecular compounds that started with the letter 'l'. Ed could take the chemical compounds apart backwards if he had a functioning array. Standing here at the edge of the street, eyes filling with excess saline solution, would achieve absolutely nothing.

He waited until the stinging sensation faded at the corners of his eyes, and then Ed turned away from the warehouse and began running. Just running, full bore, no real aim or direction. The tightness in his chest could be converted to ache from oxygen deprivation. The fury, the frustration he could beat out along the pavement. Ed ran, past market stall and food cart, pony cart and motor car, until the thoughts that were threatening to overwhelm him were strung out behind, so he could let them catch up one at a time.

He finally stopped outside a small housing complex next to a tram station and bent down to grip his knees, panting. He heard fluttering noises somewhere overhead and looked up to see a line of streamers that turned out to be someone's underwear, pair after pair of woolly gray long-stockings stretched out to dry on a string running between the two buildings. The housewives in these poorer areas often put their laundry out like this, and sometimes Ed wondered who mounted the hooks so that people could run these lines.

He laughed, harshly, to think he was even bothering with that at a time like this.

Now that the desperate edge was off his thoughts, he supposed he should consider what to do next. It was clear from Alfons's bit of grandstanding back there that his tenure with Special Projects Group 21 was up. (_Don'tthinkdon'tthinkdon'think about that right now_, he told his heart, which was beginning to hurt again, _stay focused on the Plan._) And while perhaps he could have apologized somehow -- maybe if he'd groveled enough, maybe Jean would have stuck up for him, any number of increasingly ludicrous 'maybes' -- what was done was now indisputably done. Damage control, Ed thought, he needed damage control. It was too late tonight, but first thing tomorrow morning, he would have to go in and see if he could catch their elusive faculty adviser, Assistant Professor Oberth - a junior professor, not yet a full doctor. They hadn't seen very much of the man recently because he was too busy writing his own dissertation on rocketry; even better for Ed. If he got to the man before Alfons did, maybe he could find some way to salvage his apparently crumbling reputation. Switch to another team, keep his head down, prove his worth. He knew he could do it if they'd just give him the _chance_, damn it all.

Frustration caught up to him again and he started jogging once more, trying not to give in to the urge to have a hissy fit right there next to the tram pick-up.

_Where's Al when I need him?_ the brief, guilty thought flashed through his brain as he jagged around a clump of tired-looking housewives queuing up for the street car. Al would never have let him get himself into such a mess. Dorchett...that part had been entirely his fault, he considered morosely. He'd just never stopped to think how he must sound when he tried to explain things - or not explain things, as the problem seemed to have been. He was so used to having a lab all to himself...well, Al shared it too, but Al was like half of his own soul, Al didn't count. The two of them could be locked in a three-foot supply closet for all it mattered; they had their rhythm down. Al just knew when to hand him things and when to duck for cover, and Ed knew when he could interrupt his brother and when to keep silent, because Al worked best without any words or explosions to distract him.

It wasn't if the University of Munich was exactly generous with special projects teams either. Sharing space with others was weird enough without having so very little of it to share. Alfons's project team had at least nine regulars (sometimes more, when curious underclassmen interested in padding their resumes happened to drop by) and based on the labs Ed had seen on campus proper, half the space that an undertaking of lesser magnitude would get. And back home...in Amestris, all he'd had to do was flash his State Alchemist's watch. The military establishment provided well for their researchers, and the National Labs in the capitol provided room for experiments pretty much on a moment's notice. When he and Al had an idea that they wanted to test, they turned in a requisition form and got anything - any materials at all - that they required, a huge space to themselves, and if necessary even guards to keep their lab secure when they needed to run out to catch food or sleep.

Requisition forms which, in retrospect, his commanding officer must have signed and worked out in the budget somewhere. And no matter how rare the component was that they were requesting, or how difficult it was to find fifteen replacement Brigg's regulators on overnight notice, things had always been stocked right on time. Colonel Mustang probably deserved a fucking medal, Ed thought sourly. As difficult as Ed apparently was to deal with, the man had indulged his every last whim. He never would have had to beg Mustang for a larger Liebig condenser.

Ed continued his long, steady jog until the streets finally brought him circling closer to home, and only then did he feel comfortable enough to slow the pace down. The green grocer he knew looked up as he passed, but he pretended not to see the man wave. His legs felt like they were made of gelatin, and the corners of his mouth were flecked with sweat that he could taste. He probably looked just as horrible as he felt.

The part of town his father lived in was close by the river, and he could smell its stench from a good several blocks away. It was a modest neighborhood, neither a slum nor particularly ostentatious. Apartment buildings and boarding houses and narrow townhouses with the occasional broken window fought for dominance along the narrow cobblestone streets. In this area you were as likely to see an old cart and draft horse as a motor car, and Ed found himself side-stepping piles of stray dung more than once as he picked his way to their apartment.

Their landlady was out front sweeping the gutter when he arrived at the narrow tan and brick building where they rented. Ed dipped his head to her briefly as he passed. Her hair was always pulled back into a tight bun when she worked, a style that on an older person might have reminded him of Auntie Pinako. There was no other resemblance, superficial or otherwise, thankfully. Mrs. Goldmann was a hard woman, but on a different axis from Winry's grandmother. Pinako had been a small but fiery lady, with a flash pan temper and a wicked wit, neither of which she'd been afraid to use. Mrs. Goldmann was every inch the lady, reserved and proper, and Ed often got the sense that she reigned her opinions in, though it was clear sometimes she had questions burning in her eyes for him and his strange father. She kept things clean and neat because she felt cleanliness was somehow close to godliness, and only complained obliquely about the stench of his father's cologne.

She was also, like the majority of her renters, slightly at odds with the general culture. Ed had not known until a neighbor in passing had complained to him. Rent had gone up again, the second time in as many months, and the man - a heavyset bachelor who lived on an upper floor; Ed did not personally know him - had complained long and bitterly at the posted notification, interrupting Ed's slow attempt to read printed Drachman.

"Damn Jews," the man had muttered darkly, casting periodic glances that seemed to be inviting Ed to commiserate with him. "Trying to bleed us dry, they are. They'd pinch a Pfennig till it screamed if they could."

And so on and so forth. Ed himself had only been irritated by the man's constant interruptions, but he had still kept an ear out to glean for information. His landlady and her husband, it seemed, were of the wrong religious cast, which was in and of its self some ethnic minority. As troublesome as being a "Brit", and to Ed's eye as impossible to define. Amestris had its own minority groups but they all had the decency to look different from Centralians: the Ishvar with their alien eyes, the color of dark red clay, the Xingians with their round faces and dark hair and nonexistent eyelids (like the Colonel, who was half and sickeningly beautiful because he combined the best of both worlds). Here in Munich, the rules were different, and Ed found himself more often than not walking along an invisible tight-rope. As with the Frenchman, he never knew when the company he kept might get him in trouble.

Not that he hadn't done a good enough job of that on his own, Ed thought, once again thoroughly disgusted with himself. Dorchett might have occasionally given him and Jean shit for the way they pronounced things, but then again Dorchett gave everyone shit for one thing or another. At the core, he was a good guy. Ed had had no call to snap at him when Dorchett had meant well, and the worst part was that he was fairly certain he'd done so before. Like a spoiled little brat who couldn't stand to have someone else touch _his_ toy truck, _his_ distillation equipment.

Again, the realization that it wasn't just Alfons -- that there was a part of the tension at the lab that Ed himself had incited --it made his stomach twist.

Ed climbed the stairs up to his father's flat and palmed his key into the lock, seeking refuge from the day, and his own thoughts. He hung up his coat and vest on the hook set into the wall, shucked his shoes and left them sit where they fell.

Now, the hard part. From the lights burning in the parlor room, and the sheer power of the cologne in the air, he could tell his father must be home.

Ed padded through the hallway, quiet as a thief, hoping against hope perhaps he wouldn't be noticed.

He was noticed.

"Hello, Edward," Hohenheim called quietly from his chair. The little parlor-room their flat contained had a couple of mismatched pieces of furniture, an armchair here, an end-table there. His father always had to pick the largest, most formidable seat for some reason, a huge leather thing with a winged back, lots of stuffing, easily as tall as Edward. He had it turned east, facing toward the open hallway door, directly in line to see Ed sneaking past. If Ed didn't know better, he could have sworn the bastard had set things up so that he could catch Ed creeping in.

"You're home early."

Ed cursed, but what was he supposed to do? Lie?

"Yeah," he replied instead. "I am." Acknowledge the most cursory truth, but provide no further information. It was an Elric tradition that had gotten him through countless delicate situations before, and Ed hoped perhaps there the matter could drop.

Unfortunately, he kept forgetting that regrettably, his father was in fact related to Al - perhaps even had a touch of Colonel Mustang in him. The corners of the man's lips turned down ever so slightly, and his eyes narrowed as he squinted at Ed's unbuttoned collar, the sweat stains circled around his armpits. Ed wished he hadn't worn a white shirt today.

"Is everything all right?"

For a moment, he debated telling his father everything. His father was...not dependable, no, neither of them would ever call him that. _I always wanted to be,_ Hohenheim had said wistfully on more than one occasion, and he brought home money often enough to keep the landlords happy - where from was a mystery Ed had yet to ascertain, a pact with the devil for all he knew. But they both knew the truth, that any real stability was fleeting. His father kept odd hours, often floated out at the most random of times - four in the morning and the lights would be burning, or four in the afternoon and he would be asleep on the couch, one large hand over his face. He could disappear into the floor's shared restroom with a book for hours on end, only coming out when old lady Bahr down the hall went to screech that it was her turn in the bath, could he step out already, and would he drain the tub _completely_ this time, the water smelt foul after he used it. Ed understood these things. He had many of the same habits. It was why he understood, painful as it was, that what they both wanted likely could never be.

Genetics had doomed him. They took their coffee together awkwardly in the mornings, read the headlines of the _Post_ aloud to each other, and tried to do the best that they could between their respective attention spans, before work and research ate them both alive. They were both perhaps a shade too quirky to consistently perpetuate a connection - or hell, even hold a conversation sometimes - but they could do the best with the time they still had.

His father was not dependable, but he was there. He was _something_.

Then his father moved his arm, briefly exposing his wrist from his jacket sleeve, and Ed caught a brief glimpse again of the rot that was continuing to spread its way across his body. An insidious, ugly stain, like a bruise that never healed. A bruise on the man's soul, Ed had thought once in a fit of anger, after some argument he'd already forgotten. The truth was, he was afraid. This was all he had left, and sooner or later, he was going to lose his father again, too.

He decided not to tell him, at least not the absolute truth.

"Yeah, I'm okay," he said instead. "Just jogged home is all, sorry." He pulled at the sticky sleeves of his shirt uncomfortably, trying to get some air beneath his arms. The cotton clung to him like a second skin, and he was aware he probably desperately needed a bath. Were it not for cloying, overpowering presence of his father, he would probably be radiating stench himself.

"I did have some trouble with the guys at uni," Ed admitted. "That's why I left early. I'm thinking of switching to a different project team."

Another Elric family tradition, he thought sadly. Never tell a lie when half the truth will do.

The same well-intentioned bullshit that lead a man to let his sons think he'd abandoned them, because he did not want them to know the past sins that were literally rotting the heart out of him.

"Really," Hohenheim said, arching an eyebrow.

"Yeah. This one guy, he's—hard to work with," Ed said, for lack of a better phrase. There were many words he'd like to use to describe Alfons, but none of them were polite. "He just bugs the hell out of me for some reason. We keep getting into fights about the stupidest things – he starts most of them, not me, before you ask. I've tried to ignore it, but he's the team leader. When he says jump, the rest of us have frog, you know?"

"That sounds unfortunate. What are you going to do about it?" his father asked, the very picture of parental concern and compassion. Ed forced himself not to snarl at that.

"Oberth's got a couple teams that he's advising. Maybe I'll fit better elsewhere, I don't know."

Fuck, he hoped so. He wondered how he was going to wake up early enough to make it to the man's office before Alfons did tomorrow morning. One thing he'd give the bastard, Alfons had a work ethic. Maybe he shouldn't go to bed at all, just in case. Or maybe he should, so he could be rested and alert for whatever came his way, but in that case he should sleep now.

He missed Al again in a passing – if guilty - way. As horrible, awful, and despicable it was to think that his brother's time in armor had its benefits, he did miss getting wake-up calls at any time of the day or night. When his brother had been a disembodied soul, he had never slept.

"...could you do me a favor, actually?" he asked his father reluctantly.

"Anything."

A deep, smooth baritone without the slightest hint of insincerity, and Ed's heart twisted all the more for it. His father's voice was so friendly sometimes, so caring and compassionate, that it still made him want to rip the man's face off. It wasn't fair of him to just...come back into a person's life like this, it wasn't. They were both too alike to ever do more than coexist together, drifting in and out of each other's lives. But as flaky as his father was, he could ask this much and be sure of getting it.

"Could you wake me up at four tomorrow? I need to get in early to catch my adviser before he disappears again."

His father's brow crinkled. "That's awful early."

"I don't want to risk missing him again, and I'm tired of playing message-tag. He's been working on his damn dissertation so much he hardly ever shows to lecture even, it's kind of pissing me off. Please, for me?"

Hohenheim nodded slowly. His head made a nasty squishing sound on his neck, like ripe muskmelon being smooshed in a bowl. They both ignored it.

"I think I can handle that," his father said, and smiled. He had a nice smile, really. Big, broad teeth with little smaller ones peeking out like fangs at the corners of his mouth, white and pristine without the slightest hint of decay. Ed hoped that Al had teeth like those, a beautiful, happy smile.

Alfons's didn't look like that, he realized randomly. When the haughty bastard had deigned to smile at all - rarely at him, mostly at other people doing things he Approved of - he had showed only a few small teeth, and the expression looked nothing like Ed remembered the real Alphonse's smile to be.

Ed turned to head back down the hallway and gather his wash things so he could have the bath. He paused and looked back toward his father, his father's golden hair – thought of pale blond hair versus remembered golden brown.

"…Dad?"

The word that he never said, and it stuck in his throat just a little, made his voice hurt. Hohenheim looked up instantly.

"...yes?"

"All these people, who are supposed to be ones we know... Do you think you'd know Al here, if you saw him?"

His father's eyes glimmered quietly then, a tacit understanding plain on his face.

"It depends. When I met you as Eduard in London," he said, "I said that Eduard was the person you might have been. But you aren't. He looked exactly like you - from head to toe identical, and still it took me six months before I realized the truth, that he was supposed to be you."

He folded his hands in front of him then, big hands, strong, just like Ed had remembered in memories. The hands he had always secretly hoped that he would grow to have some day.

"But when Dante forced you to cross over - when I saw you in his eyes, I knew you in a second. My one, true, real son. You are more than what your circumstances make of you. Never forget that, son."

And that was the other word they never used, the one that cut sometimes, made his eyes sting. The other word they often danced around, and suddenly it was all too much for him.

"...thanks, Dad," Ed said, and bolted for the bath.

* * *

Oberth's latest 'office' was to a regular assistant professor's cabinet room as Special Projects Room 21 was to any of the real labs on campus, Ed discovered the next morning, bright and early on the first floor of the university physics building. The room looked as though it had once been a private office, now shared amongst three, maybe four people, Ed determined from the number of desks. He circled around a couple times taking in the different workspaces, trying to figure out which one specifically belonged to his adviser. Not the bare, paperless desktop, he determined out of hand. When the Assistant Professor did deign to show up and give lecture, or come to a tutoring session, his briefcase was forever bulging at the seams. In five minutes he could cover a table with bits of paper, various pieces of telescopic equipment, the half-sandwich he was meaning to eat when he got around to it.

Ed himself was more meticulous with his research notes and supplies, but he tolerated his mentor's eccentricities – including his tendency never, ever to be on time. He took a seat in the corner and waited until the man finally showed up, more than half an hour past his scheduled arrival time.

Oberth was a very linear man. He had square shoulders, a square jaw, an extremely straight haircut; a widow's peak that cut a perfect 'v' into the center of his forehead. He entered the room and went straight for his desk – not the exact desk Ed had thought, but indeed as he had predicted, it was one of the messier ones. The man's handlebar moustache still bore a hint of shaving foam, and it was apparent from his manner that he was rather rushed this morning. Ed decided to make it quick.

"Good morning, Professor," he called out, trying to alert his adviser to his presence.

"What the hell—"

Oberth startled visibly and whipped around, nearly dropping the armful of papers he was carrying. A few slipped out between his fingers and fluttered to the ground anyway.

"Oh, Edward! I'm sorry, I didn't notice you."

"No, no, it was my fault. Sorry, I didn't mean to surprise you."

Ed went down on his hands and knees and helped pick up the few pages that had escaped his mentor's grasp. Oberth accepted them gladly and shuffled them back into the pile.

"What brings you here this morning?" Oberth asked him.

Ed drew in a breath.

"I hate to bother you this early in the morning, Professor. I just wanted to make sure I didn't miss you. I have a favor to ask, I--"

"I know, I know." Oberth interrupted, waving one hand dismissively. He set his stack of papers down on his desk. "I'm sorry about the tutoring sessions. Ever since we moved offices, I just haven't had the time to turn around, it seems." He glared briefly down at his overloaded desk. "Nor the space."

Ed nodded politely, trying not to say anything. Oberth could have an entire warehouse to himself and he would still run out of room.

"I promise you, I'll find time again soon. I didn't mean to neglect you," the man said, but his actions belied his words, and it was clear Oberth's attention was already wandering. He began shuffling through a few of his papers, shifting the mess on the left hand side of his desk more toward the middle. Ed saw no particular rhyme or reason to it.

"It's just been very…chaotic, lately," the professor sighed. The down-turned lines of his moustache made him appear to frown even further, like a cartoon caricature in the _Post's_ funny pages.

"I can see that," Ed said diplomatically. He tried not to look too obviously toward his adviser's desk. "But that's not what I was going to ask. Sir, Alfons and I…we've had certain creative differences, and I was wondering if perhaps there might be use for my talents elsewhere."

Oberth paused for a moment, one hand still mired in his sea of papers.

"You can't work with Alfons?"

"No," Ed said, his heart in his throat. He hated to disappoint the man. When Ed had first started getting interested in the idea of traversing worlds by rocket, it had been Oberth who had been willing to take him in, to help him find the papers he was interested in. It was at Oberth's encouragement that he'd come to the University of the Munich and joined project twenty-one to begin with. The man could be a flake, but he tried to be a good mentor. Ed didn't want to be an ingrate.

If there was one thing the past twenty-four hours had taught him, it was that he needed to be more grateful.

"I see," Oberth said. His voice was calm, but it had a wintry edge to it. Ed felt the immediate need to explain himself.

"With all due respect sir, I think it would be unwise for the both of us if we were to continue." And likely unhealthy - for Alfons at least. Ed had the queasy thought again that for all he knew, he'd broken the man's jaw yesterday. He hadn't exactly pulled his punches.

_Alfons deserved it,_ he tried to convince himself. At the very least, he owed no apology. He had hit Alfons physically, yes – but the things Alfons had said, the accusations he had leveled…that sort of thing could possibly get Ed in far worse trouble. Jail, perhaps. Maybe killed. He wasn't even sure.

He wished again he understood the rules of this place. So many of these tensions were easy to ignore - until they cropped up and threatened to bite him in the ass.

"So you want me to help you move to another project group, is that it?"

Oberth's thick eyebrows drew together in a thunderous scowl. Ed cast his eyes down toward the floor, imminently ashamed.

"If it would be at all possible," he said in a quiet voice.

Oberth sighed and drew one large, square palm down over his face.

"Well, I wish I could say I were surprised. You're both the same age…I had hoped that you two might get along…"

"I know," Ed said miserably.

"But well, it's not as if it hasn't happened before," the man muttered darkly. He went around to the other side of his desk, still futzing with papers aimlessly.

Ed blinked.

"What?"

"Alfons has never had an easy time keeping team members," Oberth said.

"Really," Ed said. "I can't imagine why."

The sarcasm must have been evident in his voice, because Oberth gave him another dirty look.

"I mean, ah, he does expect a lot of people," Ed amended hastily. Constantly. Arrogantly. Picking every last idea apart. Damn it, he knew it wasn't his imagination that the man had been prone to picking on him! As wretched as he had been, Ed's mood was slightly starting to lift. He had been unforgivably rude to Dorchett, yes…but having confirmation, actual third-party confirmation that maybe their clash hadn't been entirely his fault after all made Ed feel obscurely better.

"And people expect a lot from him in return," Oberth said. His eyes were reproachful. "It isn't easy for older men to take direction from someone ten years their junior. In some cases, old enough to be their son. Alfons is under a lot of pressure to hold things together, despite being so young. I had hoped you might be able to sympathize."

_Oh, spare me the bullshit,_ Ed thought angrily. _I've been dealing with older idiots my entire life, and I handled that just fine._

Handled it, he considered, by always being the best – never faltering, never failing, and fighting up hill every step of the way to prove that he was the smartest, fastest, best alchemist there was. If there had been anybody to compete with him…

_It still doesn't excuse his behavior,_ Ed thought forcefully, trying to put Alfons out of his mind again. Ed had never once tried to question Alfons's authority or try to take his team away, or any of that bullshit. He'd set out quite clearly just to be their fuels expert, and had never once made as if he wanted the head honcho-seat. It was Alfons who had decided to go be all threatened, Ed had never once made any move to usurp him.

"I do understand Alfons's position," Ed said politely. "Our conflict is on a different level. Fundamentally, we just don't see eye to eye, sir."

Eye _for_ an eye was more like it, apparently. He had set out to teach Alfons a lesson, and Alfons had repaid him by trying to destroy his reputation.

He just couldn't work with that.

"All right, Edward," Oberth sighed. He set the papers he was holding down and looked up at Ed. Once again, a hand went to his face, tugging at the corners of his droopy moustache. "I'll give it to you straight. I don't know that I can get you on any other project teams, none that are working on practical implementations, at least."

"Because people think I'm British, I know," Ed ground out. "I heard."

Oberth gave him a sharp look.

"No," he said. "Because there are no groups doing implementation _left_."

"…what? I thought you were advising another team – Christian what's-his-name's group, right?" Their informal 'competition', whom Lars and Dorchett had sometimes seen fit to make jokes about.

Oberth shook his head.

"They moved on to other things a few weeks ago, Edward. The department's cutting our program. This inflation is getting to the point where even the lunkheads on the budget board are having to get their act together." He made an ugly face at that. Ed recalled Oberth had ranted about university financial budgeting before, how too little money was being allocated to physics and associated projects compared to medicine – admittedly an important field in the wake of war, but surely the language department could take a cut, etcetera etcetera.

He remembered again the fight over the condenser, how Alfons had complained they just didn't have the budget for it. Ed felt a little sick.

"I'd added you to Alfons's group because I thought the two of you might have the best chance of hanging in there," Oberth said. "We're under pressure from the dean of physics to produce some results if we want to keep any of our funding at all. I'd thought maybe you two…" He trailed off and looked away, seemingly preoccupied.

"Isn't there anything else we can do?" Ed asked. "I can lead my own group – I know enough of the basics now, I think, you've worked with me. My father knows the dean too, maybe he could talk with him -"

"Edward," Oberth said, and his voice was stern. "You're not listening to me. I said, the program is getting cut. You think I haven't gone twenty rounds about this with the department heads already? The fact is," he spat, "the decision-makers here are all old, stuffed-shirt, _silly_ men, who are so married to tradition they can't remotely see the forest for the trees. They wouldn't recognize the future if it came up and bit them in the ass. And I, for one, have had a belly full of it."

He slammed his hand down on his overloaded desk, looked around the room scowling at the clutter.

"I've been putting feelers out at the University of Heidelberg," he said. "If they will not accept my thesis here, perhaps the scientists there will see reason. This field has value, and I will have my peers realize it, or I will never be full Doctor at all."

Ed took a step back, the horror only now dawning.

"You would abandon us."

Oberth licked his lips. His moustache trembled with agitation.

"No, not abandon you…Edward, if my dissertation is accepted – if I were to become a full doctor of physics, a doctor of _rocketry_ - I would be in a position to start my own section of the department. The University of Heidelberg does not yet fund research into this field, but it will, if I make it. You could come study there with me, we could build it from the ground up. You have a brilliant mind, you would make a fantastic colleague someday."

Ed shook his head, disbelieving. Al's face – that reminded him also of Alfons's face, damn the man – welled up large in his mind, and he thought about how many years – years! – it would take to become a full doctor. He couldn't stand being from home for that long!

"You've been distant because you were thinking of your own career," he snarled, backing up toward the door. His bruised hand itched to just _punch_ again, hit Oberth's face, the door, anything. "We'd wondered why you weren't coming around so often anymore, but…You took us all on as an adviser and now you're just planning to ditch us."

"Edward, you're not thinking long-term enough."

"And you're forsaking what we have in the short term," Ed said testily. "You spear-headed this research here…"

"It's out of my hands," Oberth said quietly. "Just look around you. I've been moved three times in the past six months, into increasingly smaller spaces. They've been bumping my lectures. The university is supposed to focus on 'practical' research, in these difficult times. If the rocketry division produces nothing 'practical' within the next few weeks, it's going to be cut completely."

For a moment, they just stared at each other, and then Ed's eyes lowered. He turned away.

"Enjoy your new office in Heidelberg," he said. "Hope they give you a broom closet for your trouble."

He paused on his way out, his knuckles fisted white on the doorknob.

"I'm going to see what I can do for the here and now," he said lowly. "I'm not quite ready to give and up and start over just yet."

He tore out of the physics building at a full run, heading home to where his father was. His father had helped him get into the university before, he remembered. He hated to have to ask, but perhaps his father could help him again…

As he ran, he passed through the main drag of campus and cut through a veritable sea of students. He thought he spied a familiar shock of pale blond hair across the way, but he did not look back.

* * *

**Author's Notes: **Whew, so glad to get this chapter out! It's been hot as hell where I live and my partner and I have no air conditioning XD; I'm dedicated to finishing this story up soon though! (If nothing else, I also have to work on "Forward the Machine" XD)

**Review Responses: **

Ling Yao: Thank you for your kind comments! I appreciate your loyal readership.

Ellie: Thank you, I'm glad you find Alfons interesting. I agree, one of the fascinating things about alter!Al is that well…he's just so very different from spunky Alphonse Elric. (In fact, I'm not entirely convinced Alfons Heiderich was really alter!Al at all :P )

Inachis: Thank you so much! I am flattered to hear this feels 'real' to you. Writing a biased observer is tough but I am glad that it is working out :)

Edamame: Thank you so much – I appreciate that you can see some of the inherent (if dark) humor in a situation like this XD; Poor Ed, he doesn't realize how wrong he is, sometimes.


	4. Draw a line in the sand

A/N: Review responses are at the bottom of the fic. Thanks so much for reading and letting me know what you think – it helps me improve a lot!

* * *

Over the next several days, the world increasingly resolved itself into one of two options: dead ends and more dead ends. Ed wandered from office to office on campus making inquiries, sounding professors out, asking hard questions about the physics program. Oberth had made it clear that he had pretty much given up on rocketry at the University of Munich; well, it was Elric family policy never to give up on anything that had so much as a breath of life left in it.

And the project Ed had been on -- admittedly one he was no longer privy to, but it served as an excellent example case -- had plenty of life in it. He could say one thing for Alfons, the man's methods were a pain but he did get results. As much as Ed hated to provide drafts of his ideas and work according to deadlines, Alfons's tight focus on the 'practical' meant that the various pieces of the whole came together predictably and well. Before his falling-out with the team, they had been on schedule to have a functioning scale model of their rocket, staging and all, ready for show in the not too far distant future. The technology was there. The technology was tantalizingly close, in fact.

Unfortunately, his options for funding it were growing few and far between. He didn't want Oberth to be right, but the more professors he consulted, the more he was beginning to realize that the man had a point. No one in the Experimental Physics department would see him. No one in the Theoretical Physics department would see him. Not even Oberth's direct adviser was willing to meet for the five minutes it would take to hear about the "exciting, budding field of rocketry" (as Ed has taken to calling it; a much catchier turn of phrase than "endeavors in exoatmospheric aeronautical engineering". Alfons and Oberth were cut from the same cloth, that much was obvious: neither could turn a phrase if it came with a steering wheel.) Ed had spent a frustrating week camping in cold hallways before someone had finally, kindly enlightened him as to what his problem was. It was the new director of Physics, apparently, who had seen fit to take from their sector's budget. Professor Wien, formerly in charge of the smaller Theoretical Physics department; newly promoted to the head post in the physics program in the wake of beloved Director Röntgen's recent, sudden departure.

It was a change Ed had scarcely noticed when it had happened a couple months before, but one that seemed to have had far-reaching effects over the entire department. Wien was no slouch, but Röntgen had been an extraordinary man to have as director - a true pioneer in the field of physics. He'd even won the first Nobel prize in the category. "Nobel prizes" were like the Green Lion awards back home, Hohenheim had explained to Ed, one of the highest honors an alchemist could receive. Wien had earned his own Nobel as well, but he also had big shoes to fill in the eyes of his new bosses, whom had selected him for his 'expert understanding of both leadership and fiscal matters'. The man was under pressure, it was hinted very heavily, to perform well out of the box and help staunch the bleed of monies from the department's loss-leading development sector.

In short, _politics_, Ed thought with disgust. The sorts of power plays and money-grubbing that Mustang had been forever mired in, and Ed and Al had stayed far, far away from. It was the business of policy makers to look out for their own best interests, while looking as though they were looking out for everyone else's, the colonel had been fond of saying. Here the old saw was, back to slice at him again: another parallel, and certainly an unpleasant one.

"But why waste materials running so many combustion trials? Can't you just work the thermodynamics out on paper?" one professor had wheedled when Ed had asked for help petitioning the new director. At the time he'd thought the man was being unreasonably obtuse. Now he thought he understood. Wien's passion lay with radiation, the mysteries of atoms and their properties - which had often been relegated to purely theoretical work in the past. Now that Wien was director, Ed couldn't help but note that most of the more costly research that had been kept intact pertained to radiation and spectroscopy.

"Look out for your own best interests" indeed. Well, Ed believed in looking out for his own best interests too. He wasn't going to give up on what they had going here without first exhausting every weapon in his arsenal. He was going to get home. He could see the executioner's axe coming, but at least it meant he had a chance to fight back.

He wondered if Alfons knew the aeronautical program was being cut.

"Are you ready?" Hohenheim asked quietly, interrupting his thoughts. He did not touch him directly, but he reached one arm out to brush Edward's coat sleeve, bringing Ed's focus back to earth in a subtle way which Ed appreciated. They were standing in the atrium just outside the main offices of the physics department, a grand old chamber with polished floors and heavy, ornate doors to either side that looked nearly as formidable as the Gate itself. It was the very heart of the University's physics program and the doors banged open and shut constantly, beating, pumping young minds in to venerable researchers. It would not do to stand around lollygagging.

Ed looked one last time into the small pocket mirror his father had loaned him and adjusted his tie again, uncomfortable. The ugly, obstinant thing stuck out from his neck like a misplaced tail. He tried to straighten it and it swished out of the way yet again, earning his ire.

"Damn it! The stupid fetishes these people wear, I swear..."

His father gave him a pitying look and reached for the contrary fabric, which did not endear the thing to him further.

"Men wear ties in Amestris as well, you know," Hohenheim remarked quietly, keeping his voice down so not to be heard by curious passersby.

"Maybe four hundred years ago they did," Ed said, though with no real malice. The overpowering scent of cologne threatened to suffocate him as his father's hands came up toward his face, and Ed willed himself to stand firm. He held his breath as his father fiddled briefly with the knot and exhaled only after his father drew away.

"There," Hohenheim said, sounding pleased.

Ed looked in the compact mirror to see that his unruly fabric appendage was indeed lying flat now, an obedient stripe of brown down the center of his chest. His father's scent still lingered at the collar of his shirt. It reminded him of funeral flowers - cheerful, almost sickeningly sweet honeysuckle on the surface, but always underneath there was the dry, slightly sour reek of death.

He shuddered and handed the mirror back to his father.

"Thanks."

"My pleasure." His father slid the compact back into the snuff pocket of his jacket and straightened his own suit one last time. He looked at his pocket watch and winced.

"Come on," Hohenheim said. "The last thing we want is to be late."

Ed nodded and followed his father obediently through the forbidding doorway to their left and into a series of narrow, twisting corridors. It rankled to be lead around like a stupid child, but Ed swallowed his pride for once and let his father guide him. Any other day he might have tried to find his own way, or to move forward and take the lead, but at the moment he could ill afford to make a wrong turn. Professor Sommerfeld, the man they were here to see, had a reputation for appreciating punctuality and professionalism - and if there was one thing Ed had grudgingly learned from Mustang, it was that a good first impression was often clutch. He often wondered in retrospect if he would have ever thrown in his lot with the military if not for Colonel Mustang's fiery first impression: the very vision of Competence, Command, and most importantly, a Safe Haven and Solution stepping out from the flames he had used so precisely to immobilize the terrorists Ed was fighting.

He had been a bastard then too, right from the very start, but it had been too late for Ed to change his gut reaction. Luckily, the decision to trust the man had ultimately proved a good one. Ed could only hope Professor Sommerfeld would feel the same about him and his father after this meeting.

Hohenheim stopped suddenly before an oak door in the middle of the hall. It had a rectangular brass plate set into the wood, annoyingly at what must be considered proper eye-height. Ed craned his neck up to read the name etched into the plate, confirming that yes, they stood before the office of _Prof. Arnold Sommerfeld, Dept. of Theoretical Physics._ His father knocked twice, smartly, just above and to the right of where Edward was reading, and the lock turned so suddenly they both took a reflexive step back. Apparently, the professor had indeed been expecting them at ten 'o clock right on the nose.

They spared a moment to share brief, nearly identical sheepish grins before the sheer uncanniness of how -- _similar_ -- they looked drove them each to turn away.

The door opened to reveal an older but muscular man, stocky, with a receding hairline and streaks of gray flecked all about his temples. Ed knew him instantly. He was one of the professors Alfons was often seen skulking about during lunch time, or on the few non-smoking 'smoke breaks' Alfons could be convinced to take. Ed licked his lips nervously, somewhat shocked. As a relative nobody on campus, he hadn't expected to recognize such a big name researcher.

"Professor," Hohenheim acknowledged with a polite nod, and that was when Ed realized he was staring. He bowed his head as well, then recognized his mistake and stuck out his hand. His father did not shake hands because of his 'sensitive skin', a minor eccentricity that was considered harmless but acceptable for a man of his apparent stature in the academic community. Ed, on the other hand, was posing as a regular student, and it was best that he blend in as much as possible.  
Mentally, he kicked himself. One of these days he would remember that in this world, handshakes were used for both formal and informal greetings. The Amestrisian bow of respect did not apply.

"Good afternoon, professor," he said. "Sorry, I'm a lefty."

It was also annoying having to constantly excuse his reason for offering the wrong hand, but thankfully Sommerfeld didn't miss a beat. He switched around and gave Ed his own left. He had an incredibly powerful grip. Ed was almost glad he never offered his prosthetic; the way the man squeezed the bones of his human hand together, he'd hate to see what Sommerfeld could do to cheap plastics.

"Not to worry," the professor said cheerfully, in a high tenor that didn't seem fitting for his severe facial features. "Some of the best minds are wired backwards. Even the esteemed Mr. Einstein is a lefty, did you know that?"

Ed was beginning to think he was the only man in Germany without a giant moustache. Sommerfeld's was so massive, it could have put Major Armstrong's face-bush to shame.

"No sir, I didn't," he replied, hoping he wasn't staring too obviously at the moustache. It quivered with every twitch of Sommerfeld's lips. It was a strangely hypnotic sight.

"Well, I've shaken his hand myself, and I can assure you, he's a lefty." The professor winked jovially, which took some of the edge off his name-dropping.

"Now, come in, come in!" Sommerfeld said, and ushered Ed and Hohenheim into his office.

The senior department head of theoretical physics certainly got a lot more space than _theoretically_ he needed, Ed thought to himself, then mentally winced. Al probably would have liked that pun. If his brother were here with him he might even have made it, just to entertain.

"Come in, sit down! It's not much, but it's cozy," the man saying.

_Not much?!_ Ed looked about the spacious office with its multiple bookshelves, expansive desk, even a large, squishy armchair, and for a moment righteous fire burned in him on Oberth's behalf. He forgot that he was cross with the man. A space like this could fit three times as many people, even with standard issue furniture and cabinets. Why had his adviser -- even if he was not yet a full professor, even if he was only lecturing as an assistant -- been shoved into the university equivalent of a closet!? It wasn't right.

Something in his eye must have tipped his father off, because Hohenheim was suddenly at his side and frowning at him. He gave Ed the tiniest shake of his head, just enough to shake his wispy bangs back and forth across his forehead. Ed scowled right back at his father, trying to convey with his eyes and eyebrows what he knew he couldn't put into words right now.

_I'm perfectly aware I'm being petty! I wasn't going to _say_ anything to him, jeez._ It hurt him sometimes to think his father could have so little faith in him.

Hurt him worse to think that once upon a time, he would have sworn up and down that he didn't care.

If Sommerfeld had noticed the little moment of tension between them, he didn't comment. Instead, he gestured to two chairs at a small rectangular conference table situated close to his desk and bade them have a seat. They did as instructed. Ed was somewhat impressed to see that Sommerfeld then went to bring his own office chair over to join them, rather than sit far away behind his huge desk. A personable fellow, Ed thought. He was starting to remember that he'd heard Sommerfeld had that reputation.

"So you're the esteemed Professor von Hohenheim," Sommerfeld said to Ed's father. From anyone else - from Alfons perhaps - it might have sounded like a challenge, but Sommerfeld's voice held nothing but idle curiosity. "I've heard great things about you."

"Likewise," his father replied. "_Atombau und Spektrallinien_ was a magnificent piece of work."

Sommerfeld's eyebrows lifted. "You've read it?"

"Of course."

"Highly unusual for a professor of political science."

"I like to keep up with my institution's published works," Hohenheim said smoothly.

Ed shot his father a sharp look across the table. Political science? Chemistry, sure, he could have believed that as his father's cover story, maybe even medicine, but...political science? He'd known his father had likely stolen his doppelganger's identity -- or rather, the doppelganger of the body his father's soul was currently inhabiting, as his soul was far, far older than any living man -- but he had heard nothing about his father being a professor of a soft science. He made a big mental note to grill the man about it later. There were far, far too many questions that Hohenheim just waved away when Ed tried get information about their life in Munich. Far too many things like this that Ed didn't know.

_He doesn't trust me,_ Ed thought again, with an edge of despair, and then promptly pushed that hurt away too. It was neither the time, nor the place for it.

"It was an edifying read," Hohenheim told Sommerfeld, continuing to compliment his book. The man visibly preened – a review junkie as well as a name-dropper? "Your argument for Bohr's atomic model is extremely convincing."

"Yes, ah, I've read it too," Ed contributed lamely. Sometimes, he hated his father's greater command of Drachman. He couldn't come up with words like 'edifying' without a dictionary, even though he could understand them when used. It was endlessly frustrating.

Both the older men swiveled toward him when he spoke, and Ed shrank down in his chair just a little bit. Their eyes fixed on him at exactly the same time, and the effect was rather unnerving.

"Ah yes, Mister -- Elric, was it? I've heard great things about you as well." Sommerfeld's great moustache curled up at the edges, which was the only way Ed knew to look beneath it for the smile. "Why haven't I had you at lecture yet? I'm offering a general on thermodynamics right now."

"There were certain...prerequisite issues," Ed said carefully. Specifically, the fact that until a few months ago, he had not been enrolled at any institute for higher learning in this country at all. What scientific knowledge he had gained had come through writing copious amounts of letters, reading the available texts on the subject -- dawn till dusk, what sometimes felt like a never-ending game of catch-up. Ultimately it had been Oberth that had been his savior, the one who would send him anything he wished to read, the one who had urged him to come join his project officially.

Oberth, who was now planning to just pack up and move on, ready to start over and ply his thesis somewhere else. Casting Ed adrift, unable to follow without also having to start over. Ed had no proven expertise at all in this world, no academic history, no _nothing_...

Sometimes it felt like to live on "Earth" was to play a never-ending game of tag. Each time he caught up to whatever he was seeking, it winked at him and ran away.

"Prerequisite problems? Hm..." Sommerfeld clasped his thick hands in front of him. His big fingers were like sausages interlacing together. Ed remembered the man's handshake and winced.

"You didn't have Properties of Matter and Heat with Professor Röntgen before he left, I take it?" Sommerfeld asked.

"No sir, unfortunately I did not have that opportunity."

Sommerfeld's thermodynamics seminars were only open to students who had first taken a certain course under the director himself. 'Prerequisite courses', another obnoxious institution Ed had come to hate. In Amestris, an alchemist could demonstrate working knowledge of a subject and moonlight into any state academy classes. Ed had done just that several times in Central, until it had become apparent he'd be better off teaching the damn class himself.

"Well, that won't do," Sommerfeld pronounced. "Director Wien's slated to take over M&H next fall, but that wastes the whole spring semester for you...tell you what, if you're interested, I'd be willing to tutor you on the side."

Ed thought of Oberth's many promises to tutor him - how many of those had ultimately been broken, in favor of the man's own research? - and a tightness came into his throat.

"That's a very kind _offer_," he said, a little strangled. Again, annoyingly, his father seemed to read his mind. Hohenheim gave him a brief, sympathetic look across the table.

Sommerfeld beamed. "Well, I enjoy working with talented young men. Chemistry is not my chosen field, but the thermodynamics work you've done in association shows a lot of promise. Mr. Heiderich has showed me some of the theory you've come up with - it shows a lot of promise."

"Alfons did?!" If Ed had sounded strangled before, his voice was positively wretched now.

"Yes, of course," Sommerfeld's bushy eyebrows raised. "You two are in a special projects seminar together, are you not? He's been keeping me abreast of the research his team is doing."

"Professor Sommerfeld runs a number of unofficial extra-curricular activities for students in his lecture courses," Hohenheim explained. "He's been kind enough to meet with young people outside of the classroom to provide additional instruction, entirely of his own volition. Tutors them without pay. He also sponsors a lot of special projects seminars."

"Please, you make it seem more than it is. I just enjoy the company of my students and colleagues."

A lot of pieces suddenly clicked into place.

"You meet Alfons for lunch," Ed said.

"Sometimes, yes," Sommerfeld replied. "Young Mr. Heiderich does rather tend to work like a dog, as the colloquialism goes. Do tell him I miss him, next time you see him? I haven't seen him at all this past week."

"...sure," Ed said at length. From the way Sommerfeld was talking, it was apparent he hadn't yet heard about the great falling-out. Elric-family tradition again, it wasn't _technically_ lying if he promised to tell Alfons the next time he saw him…even if hopefully that would be never.

He was aware of his father's eyes on him again, but he ignored them. Finally, he had an explanation! When Ed had finally run out of options and gone to his father for help, as usual the man had merely nodded and said that he would 'see what he could do'. The next Ed had heard of it, Hohenheim had woken him up and told him they had a meeting with Dr. Sommerfeld. He had wondered why his father was taking him to meet with yet another professor - honestly, he'd been hoping for face time with the new director - but now he thought he saw what Hohenheim aiming for.

His father had found him a new mentor, since Oberth was leaving.

A highly-esteemed full doctor for a mentor to be exact, one with ties to many important figures in the physics world. Sommerfeld might not be into rocketry himself, but he might be able to persuade others to support Ed's research here. If he got in good with this man, had Sommerfeld speak on behalf of the aeronautical program...with his connections, Sommerfeld might prove an even more powerful ally than Oberth.

Whatever he did, he couldn't afford to blow this.

"If you wouldn't mind, sir," Ed said to Sommerfeld, choosing his words as carefully as possible, "I would love to take supplementary lessons from you. A-as you may have heard, my education was interrupted by the Great War, and I have certain gaps in my knowledge that-"

Hohenheim cleared his throat a little and Ed fell silent, recognizing his cue to shut up.

"Yes, Edward would love to discuss the particular research that he has been conducting. He is, unfortunately, currently in need of a sponsor to continue it. Mr. Oberth had been in charge of the aeronautical development program, but I've recently heard that he intends to pursue other opportunities."

Sommerfeld nodded. "Yes, I'd heard Mr. Oberth was leaving. Shame," he said, in a voice that didn't at all sound like he thought it was a shame.

"Edward is looking for someone who might be interested in helping with the aeronautical program in Mr. Oberth's stead," Hohenheim continued. "The prototypes he has designed -"

"- helped design," Ed muttered softly, professional sensibilities preventing him from stealing all the credit.

"Of course, helped design," his father recanted, "are very nearly complete."

Sommerfeld stroked his moustache for several long moments looking thoughtful, and Ed's heart was suddenly beating rapidly. Sommerfeld was taking his sweet time thinking about it, yes…but the man hadn't said 'no' out of hand like all the professors Ed had been able to speak to had. He was struck with the wild, inappropriate urge to hug his father.

"With faculty sponsorship," Ed chimed in, "I could have a prototype to demonstrate within a few months. I would be more than happy to run the complete design by you first, if that's what it takes. I know the department is very particular about proposals, and I am willing to explain my need for each and every last resource. But I swear to you, Professor, rocket technology is possible in the very immediate future --"

Sommerfeld held up a hand. Ed cut off mid-sentence.

"Yes, yes, your ideas are very sound," the man said. "I've looked at your proposed plan for fueling the device, and your mathematical proofs all seem to check out. Your theories are indeed possible to test."

"Wait...I didn't send any--" Ed blinked. He automatically looked to his father.

"I took the liberty of forwarding the good professor some of your presentation materials already," Hohenheim said. He looked a touch uncomfortable. "I hope you don't mind."

"Of course not," Ed said woodenly, though of course he _did_ mind; he was possessive of his research and presenting it was _his_ show -- but it would not be appropriate for him to admit that, not when his father had already done him such a huge favor. The annoyance simmered but he kept a lid on it.

"I appreciate it."

Sommerfeld stroked his moustache again, looking thoughtful.

"Well, as I said, your ideas hold merit. And I understand what you're aiming for with this meeting: you want me to go to the director because Oberth didn't have the clout make things happen for you – no, no, don't apologize, it happens all the time," he said, just as Ed opened his mouth to protest.  
"If I had a mark for every time someone wanted me to put my name to something, I wouldn't bother with this lousy tenure pay. Eh, Professor?"

That rather arrogant remark was direct at Hohenheim, who fielded it gracefully. Ed was distinctly beginning to get the impression that this man enjoyed being at the top of the social food chain.

"Indeed," Hohenheim said dryly. "Bad enough this inflation dogs us without having the university jackals nipping at our heels."

"They're making cuts across the board," Sommerfeld clarified to Ed. "The University is only paying half what it used to for professors to lecture - we're having to do twice as much work to get the same pay. Contrary to popular belief, students aren't the only ones suffering from the budget problems."

Sommerfeld's eyes narrowed hard on Ed, and Ed was suddenly aware he was under the microscope, being scrutinized like a bacterium - or perhaps some even lower life form than that, the way Sommerfeld's voice sounded next.

"That would be why I have to ask," the man said, his voice laden with disapproval, "why is it that you're asking for your own team in your proposal? I'd thought you were working with Mr. Heiderich in Oberth's special projects seminar."

Ed sucked down hard on his lip, mind racing, trying to think of what to say. He hadn't expected Sommerfeld to actually know who he was -- not the great Sommerfeld, world-class researcher, big name on campus; the man whose low-level general lectures were only open if you first took other courses. He certainly hadn't expected Sommerfeld to know Alfons, either. He looked over at his father again, but Hohenheim simply stared helplessly back, looking uncomfortable, fiddling with his coat sleeves. His father's scent was beginning to grow overpowering even in this large room, and Ed wondered suddenly how much longer it could before Hohenheim would have to excuse himself and run away out into fresher air.

Which would leave Ed alone to face the music.

"Alfons...Alfons doesn't know I'm asking this of you," Ed said. It was a half-truth again, but better than the embarrassing complete story. "I'm not sure if he'd approve or not. I just don't know what else to do -" _- and damn, damn, double-damn his voice cracked on that note, he hated sounding so young all the time -_ " - I don't want to lose the headway I've made here by following Oberth. Going to Heidelberg and starting over doesn't make any sense. This is a good school, and my father is here..."

He trailed off, not sure what else he could safely say. His father was giving him a curious look, a touched look, and that was uncomfortable too. Ed turned his face away.

Sommerfeld was looking at him as well, with an expression that was somehow both exasperated and amused at the same time. Ed thought of the Colonel for the second time that day.

"You young men," the man laughed. "Always in such a hurry. I envy your vigor, but perhaps not the youthful indiscretion."

Ed watched with a sinking heart as Sommerfeld stood up and walked to his humongous desk, pulled out a deep drawer that looked as though it went on forever. He extracted a thick envelope and opened it, pulling out a familiar schematic. Ed realized it must be the materials his father had sent. His eyes flicked over to Hohenheim and his father gave him a pained, sheepish grin…again, so very eerily like his own.

Sommerfeld pulled out a second brown file folder and laid it next to the first, a little smile lingering on his face.

"You two are so very much alike," Sommerfeld said, staring out at them across the room, and for a moment Ed stiffened, thinking Sommerfeld was talking about himself and Hohenheim. Then Sommerfeld opened the second folder and held up a thick ream of blue-and-white grid paper, waggled it in Ed's direction. It was hard to make out exactly what the top sheet said from where he sat, but Ed thought he recognized that precise, spidery handwriting across a requisition form.

It was Alfons's.

"You and Mr. Heiderich both seem to approach this project as if it is your last and only chance to ever build your rocket ship," Sommerfeld snorted. "That couldn't be further from the truth."

He set the papers down hard and came around to the front of his desk, folded his arms crossly.

"I'm not sure if you're aware, but Mr. Heiderich has already been after me for ages for this and that, trying to get resources that your adviser can't approve. I'll admit, my patience has grown a little thin."

The man blew a puff of air up through his moustache, fanning the wiry hairs out over his lip. "Mr. Elric...you boys have to understand, _it's just a seminar_. A lot of seminar projects fall apart after the semester is over, or when the professor leaves. You two are both pursuing doctorates, are you not? I promise you, if you make full doctor, you will have a whole world of time and resources with which to pursue your pet projects."

"I know how frustrating it is to be young and ambitious, but you have to understand. Sometimes we have to wait for the things we want," Sommerfeld added, not unkindly.

_No, you_ don't _understand,_ Ed thought angrily. His fingers curled themselves into fists beneath the table, unbidden. _I've already been waiting my whole life for this. Al's been waiting._ His breath hissed in and out of him, whistling through the little gap in his front teeth; he felt like an angry snake.

As he was pondering how to put his feelings into words - if there was anything he could say at all - his father reached over and nudged his elbow beneath the table. Sudden warmth welled up within his chest, and the sickness churning in his gut eased despite the reek of Hohenheim's cologne. His father touched people so rarely, out of necessity, that even that small gesture was touching.

Newly fortified, Ed continued. "You said yourself the project has merit. Why shouldn't we be pursuing it as a student project? I've looked into it, I can scale things down next semester - there was a lot of waste in the initial stages of the project, but my method is pretty much streamlined now." _Alfons's method, really, but Sommerfeld didn't have to know that._

"And we're close," he said desperately. "We're close to building something that can really break through the atmosphere, I know it."

For the moment, all thought that he was on his own, that technically he didn't have a team, none of that mattered. What mattered was that Sommerfeld just _believe him_.

Sommerfeld sighed again and folded his arms once more, though his posture was looser this time, visibly more open. Hohenheim and Ed exchanged cautiously hopeful glances.

"God in heaven, you two really don't quit, do you?" the man sighed. It was unclear if he meant Hohenheim and Ed or Ed and Alfons, but either way, the comment bolstered Ed's spirit. He could not be sure if it was wishful thinking or not, but he thought he detected a hint of admiration in the man's bright tenor.

"All right, let me ask you this - if you are so interested in space travel, then why aren't you working more with the theoreticals involved? Professor Röntgen was offering a course last semester on special relativity. Where were you?"

His father fielded that one for him before Ed could snap at Sommerfeld for being an idiot, for which Ed was eternally grateful. Hadn't Sommerfeld listened to him at all earlier?

"As previously mentioned," Hohenheim said quietly. "Edward has not been with the university for long. Owing to the war."

"Yeah," Ed chimed in. "I came in at the tail end of last semester. I don't know about Alfons, but I would have loved to take that course."

"There's another being offered next fall," Sommerfeld said gruffly.

"Then I'll sign up for it," Ed lied. He didn't want to tell the man, not when Sommerfeld obviously supported it, how very much he hated Einstein's theory of relativity. Space travel, other worlds -- they had proof by telescope that other planets existed in this strange little solar system. They could send a rocket out in search of them, Ed knew it was possible, if only they could break free from stubborn gravity. Maybe find his own world by doing so. But relativity...

_If there is no absolute reference frame - if Einstein is right - then traveling at the speed of light to get home would mean that time slows for me._

Al would be dead long before he ever reached Amestris.

Or worse - much worse - it would mean that universe functioned differently altogether. If energy had to be conserved here, when it didn't in Amestris, land of alchemy, that implied the two worlds were fundamentally dissimilar. Ed already knew the Gate was the source of Amestris's spare energy -- the Gate which was currently off limits to him, of course. But there had to be some way to get back to it, or around it, or past it...Ed just knew it. If he used the technology of this world -- if he built a vessel, if he could accelerate himself fast enough, if he could just do _something_ -- perhaps he could find some way to break free from the laws that governed this place.

His disgust at thinking of Einstein and his relatively _annoying_ theory must have been evident on his face, because Sommerfeld's own expression soured once more.

"You do realize that's part of your problem, don't you?" the older man asked. "I don't know if you're aware, as you haven't been with the University long, but this institution prides itself on theoretical advances. Some of the most ground-breaking work in physics in human history has been done here of late, deepening humankind's knowledge into the nature of how our world works: the structure of the atom, the nature of radiation, the secrets of so many of nature's mysteries. Setting off projectiles...it's fascinating stuff, but the experiments you have been doing seem only to be designed to test how far you can shoot something into the air."

"Gravity," Ed ground out. "The nature of vacuums - if space really is a vacuum. There are any number of your 'theories' we could help advance if we can get into space. Is that what this is about? You would rather we push pencils and doodle mathematical problems than prove this can be done? I don't know if _you're_ aware, but this aeronautical has a number of potential experimental and practical uses. Can you imagine planes powered by the engines that we've designed there?" He flicked a finger toward Sommerfeld's desk, the stack of proposals sitting forlornly on top. "Can you imagine sending a man into space? You want to talk about vision, well, maybe you should take the plank out of your own eye."

"Edward..." his father said beside him, sounding concerned. Ed ignored his outstretched hand and bolted up from his chair, staring directly into Sommerfeld's eyes.

"You're the one being short-sighted here," Ed breathed. "But fine, if you don't want a part of this, I'll go somewhere else. Not sure where, but I'll go."

Sommerfeld's mouth worked soundlessly for a few moments. His face turned a bit purple around the edges. Ed balled his fists up and stood firm, certain any minute now he was about to get screamed at.

The expected tirade did not come.

"...you have guts, boy, I'll give you that," Sommerfeld said after a long moment. He ran a shaky hand through his thinning hair, obviously still struggling with some kind of emotion. Ed waited, glowering, until the older man composed himself. "I don't think I've had someone call me out in my own office for years."

Hohenheim made a noise next to him as he rose from his own chair. His smell was really starting to get noxious, Ed realized distantly. His father was going to have to go soon, or the cologne wouldn't be enough to cover the stench of indoor rot any longer.

"Professor, my son didn't mean-"

Sommerfeld shook his head. "No, he meant it, all right."

And then, impossibly, he smiled.

"All right," he said to Ed, stepping back behind his desk. He began gathering up the papers, putting them back into their respective files in a business-like manner. "I'll sponsor your project for next semester."

Relief crashed over Ed so hard, he thought he might fall. "Thank you, Professor, you have no idea what this means to--"

Sommerfeld held up a hand again. "On one condition."

Ed licked his lips. "Anything."

"I want to see you in more of my classes next semester. I want to see theory out of you, I want to see more of how you think. You've got good ideas, I won't go back on that, but there are also lots of things you need to brush up on. Maybe meet me for lunch sometime. I meant what I said about tutoring you, you know."

"Sure, of course."

"And I want you to prove to me these experiments you two are running aren't frivolous," Sommerfeld said. He put the folders back into his cavernous desk drawer and slammed it shut. "Mr. Heiderich has already sworn up and down that you'll have something to show at the exhibition at the end of the semester. I want proof that you're committed to more than just blowing things up."

He gave Ed a brief wink, a hint of his former good humor returning.

"Otherwise, you might want to seek out the chemistry department for help. If it's just combustion you're looking for, I know a number of colleagues there who remember what it's like to be a young man interested in consuming university resources to explode things."

Ed could feel his ears growing hot.

"I assure you, sir, this project has everything to do with physics. The combustion reactions involved are sheerly to power the rocket's flight -"

A thought occurred to him.

"Wait - Alfons? I thought I was to have my own team now?"

Sommerfeld's bushy eyebrows waggled. "And when did I say that? I said I was giving you two a chance to prove yourselves. There's no point to having two separate teams working on this, that's sheer idiocy. Waste of resources."

_No, no, no..._ Ed wrung his hands together. "But we aren't--"

"Aren't _what_?" Sommerfeld's eyes gleamed, and Ed felt the world start to pull out from beneath him. He had been so close...and now he was back to being fucked over again, and it was all his own damn fault.

"If you're not together, that's your own fault. Just go join up again," Sommerfeld said. Ed had absolutely no words for him.

Distantly, he heard the noise of someone moving behind him. He had to check over his shoulder to make sure it was his father and not Irony coming to bite him in the butt.

_Figures. I come up with a solution to one problem, and it depends upon me solving another._

"Go back to your group and tell them that if you all finish your purported objective for this semester, I will help sponsor you for the next," Sommerfeld said. He went over to one of his bookshelves and pulled out a thick volume, began paging through it. Ed and his father were clearly dismissed.

Ed looked up at his father helplessly and Hohenheim shrugged back, similarly at a loss.

"What was your objective?" his father asked quietly.

Ed swallowed hard.

"To create a working model of the rocketcraft," he said, almost at a whisper.

He had just saved the group he was no longer working with. For the second time in as many weeks, Ed almost wanted to cry.

Sommerfeld cleared his throat somewhere behind them.

"Gentlemen? If you'll excuse me..."

"Of course," Hohenheim said. He pressed the flat of his large, wide hand gently against Ed's back, urging him toward the door. "Come along, son."

Ed followed him numbly, his mind still reeling from how hard that plan had backfired in his face. It was why, when Sommerfeld called out again, he very nearly missed it.

"By the way, Professor Hohenheim..." Sommerfeld said in a strange voice, his jubilant tenor oddly subdued.

Ed felt his father stop as a sudden lack of pressure on his shoulder blades, as Hohenheim's hand left his back. He looked back over his shoulder to see his father standing stock still - he had not even turned around when Sommerfeld had called his name.

"Yes?" his father responded quietly.

"The next time you see our mutual friends..." Sommerfeld said. He sounded vaguely uneasy. "Would you tell Professor Haushofer that I will not be at his villa this fortnight. I am flattered he'd invite me, but..."

"It's Professor Hess, right?" Hohenheim said, and there was something dark in his voice.

"Yes," Sommerfeld said. His face lit up, but not with happy recognition. "You can do that, right? I've heard they hold you in high regard. See to it that he doesn't come around again. I appreciate their hospitality, but some of the things I've heard Hess purport..."

"I understand," Hohenheim said. His jaw tightened a bit. "I'll take care of it. Consider your resignation submitted."

"Thank you," Sommerfeld said, and he looked at Ed's father then with what Ed could only think of as 'desperate admiration'. He had seen that expression before - on the face of miners trapped in tunnels, children hiding from explosions, any number of people he had been coming to save. "Any port in a storm", the Xingians said, one of their ocean-metaphors, and it was true. When people were afraid, they would grasp at any straw they could.

"Come along, Edward," his father said again, harshly, and Ed followed dutifully after, quiet for the moment. His father did not put a hand to his back again, nor did his expression make it seem like he was open to discussing what had just transpired.

Ed followed him out in to the chilly, winding hallways, and wondered again how exactly his father had landed this meeting this morning, and what kind of price he had just paid for it.

* * *

He parted ways with his father not long after they exited the physics building, wanting to be alone with his thoughts. Unsurprisingly, Hohenheim did not protest. It seemed his father was no more eager to talk than he was. They stood there outside the big doorway entrance for a few moments, neither one saying a word, and then after a few moments Hohenheim just started walking down the buildings' steps and drifted away down the sidewalk out front, leaving a honeysuckle trail behind him on the wind.

Ed set out himself a few moments after, following the sidewalk in the opposite direction, headed in an arc to the northwest. The road here at the center of campus curved around in a circular roundabout, and Ed followed it headlong into the bitter wind, his human hand thrust deep into the gap of his wool jacket.

Thoughts rattled about in his mind with a ferocity that was almost physically painful. He was certain he could feel the beginnings of a headache coming on. Ed rubbed his temples with the chill fingers of his prosthetic hand; when that didn't work, he pinched them.

Irony, pure and simple, had brought him to his knees; somewhere, somehow, the gods he swore he didn't believe in must be laughing at him. Ed was starting to wonder if there was a point to atheism after all. The Gate had always existed, and it existed whether he believed in it or not. It had been there when he was eleven and ignorant; it had been there when he was sixteen and desperate. It had just been there. Maybe if he _had_ believed in the existence of hell when he'd first dared to tamper in the realm of the gods, of the Other that was unblinking dark eyes and endless oceans of dead, yellow light -- well fuck, who was he kidding, he still would have tried it anyway. That was the real 'hell' of it, he thought, laughing silently to himself, with an expression more like a scream.

_I never fucking learn._

The question now was what to do with the shitty hand he had dealt himself. That was the one good thing about atheism, not believing in lies like fate or luck. As much as it pained him, he had ownership of this mistake (_ownership won with his left and right fist, he recognized ruefully, in retrospect he wished he'd battled with wits_) but at least that meant he also had control of it. He wasn't sure if it was better or worse to have been the cause of one's own downfall, but at least the situation was not beyond human ability.

Comprehension, Destruction, Reconstruction. The three tenets of alchemy, the three pillars that held up his entire world. If man could destroy something, then with sufficient understanding, man could also rebuild it.

For now, he determined what he needed was understanding. Sommerfeld had said he would support Ed's team (_really _Alfons's _team, Ed reminded himself with a snort_) only if they could meet their special project seminar's purported semester goal -- firing a functional model of their rocket. That was one truth. That he was currently not part of said group, at least in part because of his own actions, was another. Looking back, what he had done to his relationships within the group was the equivalent of Scar and his sad, oblivious form of alchemy -- mindless destruction, without understanding or purpose, and in the end it had defeated him. Ed had fought Scar with Understanding, and in the end, he had won. Perhaps he could do the same here.

First, he had to ascertain if the group had a chance of making good on their promise, period.

He tried not to think of anything other than that.

The main campus melted away, turned into the park road. Ed walked along muddy rises and past naked trees, into the market streets and then out, past green grocers and street vendors and gypsy women spreading their wares on brightly colored blankets. Butterflies the size of sparrows winged their way throughout his midsection, but his feet continued carrying him unerringly to that street on the cusp of the ghetto. Their warehouse was but one among the many crammed here on the last street of the old industrial district, a drab, tired old giant. Ed paused at the front door before slinking like a thief around to the loading dock.

Comprehension, he reminded himself firmly. It took wits _and_ courage in order to understand. In this case, the courage to face up to what he had done wrong.

Thankfully, what luck he did have (_though he didn't believe in it_), brought him a boon. By chance, he spied a familiar face alone out under the eaves, sucking on a cigarette, his watercress sandwich fisted in one hand. He must have arrived just at lunch hour.

A happy chance, or rotten luck? Either way, it was a coincidence he could use.

"Hey...Jean..." Ed called out reluctantly. He raised one hand nervously to wave.

Jean's eyes darkened, and he pulled the cig out of his mouth just long enough to spit on the ground in front of him.

Ed's outstretched arm faltered, and fell.

"It won't do you any good," Jean said. His eyes were like ice, though the smoke hissing out from his lips gave the illusion of inner fire. A slumbering dragon, waiting to bite. "He's not here."

Ed felt something wrench hard inside him. Jean -- patient Jean -- who looked so much like Havoc and always was so kind to him...even Jean...

"No, no, don't you run away from me!" the Frenchman said, as Ed slowly turned away. "Hey!"

"I thought you didn't want to talk to me."

"Who says I don't want to talk to you?" Jean tossed his still-lit smoke stick to the ground and crushed it beneath one heavy boot. When he reared his head back, the fire that poured from his mouth was formed of words.

"Believe me, buster, I've got plenty of things to say to you."

_Comprehension,_ Ed reminded himself again, and then, _I deserve this._

"Okay, shoot," Ed said, almost at a whisper. He cast his eyes down at the muddied, cobblestone street. He dared not look up and see the Frenchman's expression.

"What do you want from me?"

"What do I want from you?!" Jean barked. He laughed once, harshly, a twisted expression on his face. Ed thought he recognized that laugh-scream. "I _wanted_ you to stop being an idiot a week ago!"

"I'm sorry," Ed said, and his chest constricted because he really was sorry. It hurt with how sorry he was, his heart and head ached physically. "I didn't mean to, I'm sorry -"

"Well, 'sorry' isn't good enough! Fuck," the Frenchman swore. His fingers twitched and he pressed them back to hips, swore again when he remembered there was no cigarette there. "You know what you did, when you left? You put us six weeks behind, at least! You and your stupid bloody distillations...you couldn't have left us any instructions? In the right fucking language? Alfons is the only one of us that knows enough English, and he's been reading your bloody notes for the past week now and he still doesn't know what the hell to do with it. Which puts us even more behind, because he isn't here."

"...oh," Ed said. Comprehension had dawned in full – exactly what he had wanted, but still, it was a bitter pill to swallow. The warehouse loomed over them like a monolith, a vicious, hateful presence. No longer a home.

The Frenchman sighed and pulled out another cigarette, lit it with shaky hands.

"Oh, hell," Jean said, looking uncomfortable. He inhaled deeply, and the butt of his smoke flared bright-hot, a pinpoint of light in the warehouse's shade. "Look, okay..."

"What?" Ed said quietly, trying to brace himself. If Jean wanted to yell at him some more, so be it. The man had every right to, Ed supposed, it was his team at stake and Ed had inconvenienced them. The Frenchman, Dorchett, everyone...it seemed he'd upset everybody somehow, even though he hadn't really mean to.

_I only ever meant to fight with Alfons!_ he wanted to protest. Never the others. But they were the ones getting hurt, from the sound of it.

How was it he had he forgotten there were others involved in this project too, others with hopes and dreams and fears? How had he forgotten it wasn't just about him and Alfons, struggling against each other.

"I wasn't going to tell you this, I was going to keep my fool nose out of it, but...Edward, we're between a rock and Wien's hard head. I don't know if you know this, but the whole program's in danger, we need every last man we can get."

Edward found it hard to speak past the lump in his throat, the lump in his stomach, invisible, heavy coals weighing his entire being down.

"Yeah, I heard..." he finally managed.

Not enough, apparently. "Dammit, LOOK AT ME!" Jean's cry was so anguished, so unexpected, that Ed jerked his eyes up reflexively. The man was staring right at him, and there was none of the ice this time - just clear, piercing blue eyes gazing down at him desperately.

"Edward, we need you," the Frenchman said. "Alfons won't tell you that, but we do. Please, for the love of God, can you two end this already? Make up."

Irrational frustration welled up again, and Ed resisted the urge to snarl at the man. He had seen this look once today already, this fear, this terror. Jean was looking to him as a last, best hope; that spoke volumes already for the team's chances of finishing this project on time.

_They're not going to make it._

Anger boiled and snapped. Damn it, this just wasn't _fair_.

"It's no use anyway," Ed said bitterly. "Alfons won't hear my apology. I know him, he's stubborn; it's what got us into trouble in the first place. I'm sorry I dumped on you all but I _know_ I wasn't imagining it that he doesn't like me, he thinks he knows better than me, he never wanted me on the team. Dammit, Jean, the two of us just don't get along - why the hell would you want us to work together? We'd only make your lives miserable."

"Oh come off it! Alfons, _Alfons_ is stubborn?! _C'est la poêle qui se moque du chaudron,_" Jean replied angrily, firing out a puff of cigarette smoke.

Ed blinked. The words were smooth and foreign to his ear, rippling and vaguely silky. Whatever language it was, it had a very flowing rhythm to it.

"French," Jean said, in response to Ed's blank look. "Yes, genius, I do speak it." He took another harsh drag on his cigarette, causing it to curl visibly back toward his fingers. "You and Alfons aren't the only ones to know fancy foreign languages, you know. Got this one at my mother's teat. Contrary to popular belief, we mortal men aren't all stupid."

The man coughed smoke and went on, thumping himself briefly across the chest. "I never meant to imply you were the only one at fault. Is that the way it is, with you geniuses? Always have to be the hero, always have to be top dog in the pack. You and Alfons, you two go off and have some fight - in English, none of us fucking understand it - then you punch him and light off, and that's the last we hear from either of you for damn near a week. Well, to hell with that. If I were in charge I'd sack the lot of you, but I can't, because damn it we need you, we need your brains, and you think I like having to admit that?!"

"Jean..."

"But at least I _can_ admit it, and that's the important part." The man dropped his cigarette butt and smashed it viciously, right next to the previous one. They looked like twin pale eyes in the mud, sullied and filmy with mud.

"You two, you're smart, but neither one of you can admit when you're wrong and I'm damn well tired of it."

Ed just stood there, frozen in the wind, staring back at Jean. A number of thoughts careened through his mind, clamoring for attention. A fight in English, that no one understood...but Alfons had reamed him out in Drachman... Except that Alfons _had_ switched back to English before the end, hadn't he? He wasn't actually sure he knew the word for 'spy' in Drachman, how could he have understood the accusation? Ed wasn't sure how to feel, that after all that panic about being ousted forever for being English - for any number of the things Alfons had leveled at him - he might actually be safe.

He also wasn't sure how to feel about the fact that his command of Drachman might be even worse than he had previously thought.

"So you didn't..." Ed swallowed hard, trying to figure out how to phrase the question without repeating the accusation (especially since he most definitely could not come up with 'spy' in his Drachman vocabulary). "You didn't know what we were arguing about?"

"Oh, I have a pretty good idea," the Frenchman snorted. "We all have a pretty good idea, especially after you went off on poor Dor. Alfons was telling you not to be such an ass – cause you can be, when you want to be. My point is, the both of you have been asses recently, and if Alfons was here right now I'd tell him just the same."

Jean lowered his voice conspiratorially.

"I wasn't going to tell you this either, but the reason I went to you before? Was because I hoped maybe _you_ had an ounce of common sense in that great big brain of yours." The Frenchman leaned back against the wall and glowered. "Alfons, he's a great guy, but he can't handle people contradicting him all the time. All you had to do was lay low, stop questioning his authority every step of the way. He'll stop arguing with you if keep your trap shut unless it's important."

The word "authority" set off another twinge in the headache that was building behind Ed's eye sockets, and he curled back his lip like the dog of the military that he once had been.

"Sometimes authority needs to be questioned," he retorted.

"Sure, if it's relevant, but...about Einstein? Classic literature? The price of tea in China? I wasn't kidding when I said you two go on like my old man and lady. I don't care who starts it, I don't care who finishes it, I just want to come here and maybe accomplish something in a day's work. I'm not like you two, I'm not as smart as you two, I can't keep up with all your stupid arguments; but what I especially can't hack is the two of you at each other's throats."

"Just...just apologize long enough to give him the translation, all right? Please. For me. I know you may not think much of me, you may not even like me -"

"That's not true," Ed protested, "of course I like you, you're fun, you let me bum smokes, you're like--"

_Just like Jean Havoc,_ he wanted to say, but he trapped the words on the edge of his tongue, swallowed them. This wasn't fair to either of them, no matter how much they were alike. The Jean here was his first, only friend in this world -- besides his father, whom he wasn't sure how to classify. Jean was taking the time to help him comprehend what he was doing wrong, and to help him put it right. He owed it to the man to see something more to him than just a familiar face.

"You're like a friend to me. I mean, you are my friend. I consider you a friend, at least," Ed was aware that his argument was wilting fast, but he had to say something, damn it!

The Frenchman gave him an exasperated sigh. He clapped one hand down on Ed's shoulder though, and gave it a brief, comforting squeeze. Ed blinked and turned his head to stare at the place where their bodies were now connected. From what he had observed, the people here hardly ever touched each other. Perhaps it was Jean's other culture at work.

Jean released him and stepped back, a ghost of his regular smile playing on his face.

"Just help him understand what you were doing at least, please? He won't like it -- hell, I'd pay good money to see his face when you show up to give lecture to him -- but Alfons isn't entirely unreasonable. You can leave after that if you want to, no one's keeping you. To be honest, I'm not sure all of the guys would have you back. Certainly not without Alfons's approval. But for me...if I'm your pal at all, help me out here. We're getting down to the wire."

"Okay," Ed whispered. "Can do. What's his address?"

The Frenchman tilted his head and gave him a good, hard look. "What?"

"I'm going to go apologize," Ed repeated slowly. It was vaguely frustrating, usually Jean was smarter than this. "If he's not here, I need to figure out how to find him. Is he on campus, or would it be easier for me to find him at home?"

Jean looked a bit uneasy. "Well, I can guarantee you if he's not at lecture or in here, he's at home. Sometimes he goes off for lunches, but...not like that man takes a vacations with his sweetheart or anything like that. But I don't know if I should be giving out his home address..."

Ed sighed.

"I'm not going to go beat him up again, if that's what you're worried about. I'm supposed to be apologizing, remember?"

And now Jean's traditional easy-going smirk reappeared in full, and he laughed, a high, raucous sound. His laugh was infectious; even Ed smiled a little.

"Well, you can't blame a guy for worrying, can you? Especially after the way you laid him out, sweet Mary, you've got a mean right hook. My old man, I thought he could hit hard - you got a good one up on him in my book now."

"...thanks," Ed said, not sure how to deal with this unexpected admiration. "Can I have the address now, please?"

The Frenchman described the intersection that Ed would need to look for, a little three way roundabout a few kilometers away. It was in a nice section of town, he claimed. Ed repeated the street names over and over in his head until he thought he had them solidly memorized. Ed thanked him and turned to head off, his head high once more, an Elric on a mission.

"Good luck, _mon capitane_!" Jean called after him in an amused voice.

Ed froze. He couldn't tell for sure - it was all he could do to be fluent in one foreign language - but something about Jean's tone...if that was a cognate like it sounded it was...

"What did you just call me...?" he asked. His voice sounded gruff even to his own ears, and he winced.

Jean rubbed the back of his head, looking embarrassed. His eyes darted right and left, checking to see if anyone else was about before he answered.

"Nothing, it's just...you reminded me of my old man, marching off to do battle. Not that he fought in the Great War or anything!" the Frenchman amended hastily. "He was a joke, served a while and then quit. That was the highest rank he ever could have made - captain - so my old lady and I, we gave him crap about it. Believe you me, the biggest battle he's ever seen was with the guy across town who's undercutting his prices on house wares. Forget I mentioned it."

Jean had a bit of a wild look in his eyes, the look of a man who has just realized he'd slipped a secret and now it was too late to take it back. He had spoken French to Ed, in a show of solidarity – but that meant Ed now knew.

Ed had a secret too. For the moment, it threatened to rise up and swallow him.

"Sure..." Ed managed to wave back, fighting back that tears that burned within his eyes. "Don't worry about it." He took off at a fast pace, jogging down the street, before Jean could say the endearment again.

Comprehension.

_I never learn,_ Ed thought as he ran. Not about people, not from his own mistakes, not even the nature of God. Because God did exist, God had to. How else could it be that despite all expectation - despite how much he tried to see Jean as a separate person from Havoc, despite how much he tried to believe the crazy laws of 'physics' didn't govern this oddball world -- the evidence mounted against him anyway, because he was not all-knowing, he was not all-seeing. He did not have the power to control his life, because even when he thought he had control, things always wound up going topsy-turvy in the end.

_Boss._

_Mon Capitane._

And yet despite that, Ed was running onward, navigating on auto-pilot, hearing Havoc/Jean/whatever-he-was in his head, he couldn't help but start to laugh.

_I never fucking learn,_ he thought, and the laughter turned to gasping howls, the sting of the cold wind summoning tears, and the street people and regular people alike gave him wide berth, this sweaty, laughing, crying madman.

There was a God, and surely He hated him. All these years later and Ed was still running off to make deals with the Devil, thinking that someday, he could be free.

* * *

**Please review, good or bad – I'd love to know your thoughts**

* * *

**.Previous Chapter Review Responses:**

**Ling Yao: **Thank _you_ for being such a constant reader :)

**CrazedNeko: **I have never received such a high compliment. Thank you very much.

**Edamame: **Thanks! I am glad you like the historical details, and I am happy to hear Ed is working out for you. It's hard to watch Our Heroes be such flawed human beings (and hard to write too XD; ) Neither Alfons nor Ed are particularly nice to each other f

**Weavers: **Thank you so much! I hope this chapter didn't disappoint.

**Aurii: **Thank you! I am glad you find the characterizations are working out.


	5. The wage of honesty

At first, he just bore down and ran.

Thinking hurt. His heart hurt. That his lungs and legs should hurt right along made a crazy sort of sense. He zigzagged aimlessly about cobblestone streets, brick alleyways, more by animal instinct than the directions Jean had given him. He could smell the water, hear it; the noise of river trade and river transport always to his right, and that was how he knew he was going north, up toward where Alfons lived. Ed ran for what seemed like forever, driven by the sheer power of his inner maelstrom, until finally he realized that the fire inside him was starting to burn out.

There was something about the sheer act of motion that helped give him focus, turn sorrow and frustration back into inert lumps of coal -- still weighing heavily at the pit of his stomach, but no longer hot enough to burn. Emotional energy into kinetic, now there was an innovation if he'd ever heard of one. Ed laughed at his own thoughts once again, but the sound had lost that desperate edge of mania. He slowed on wobbly legs, alarmingly exhausted and peaky from the wind, but he found he had finally outrun his despair.

The crossing which Jean had indicated to him was indeed as curious as it had sounded. Unlike Central, which was largely a grid comprised of plumb, perfect roads and even, square blocks, Munich was a harrowing rat's-nest of a city. Streets squirmed their way along each other and into each other with exactly the same elegance as a corn crib full of rats; Ed knew because he had seen such a thing once. In Risenberg he and Al had once explored an old farm shed that had gone over to rats, and they'd lifted the cover from an old corn hopper and seen piles upon piles of the squirming, nearly-blind things crawling all over each other. Some of them were so utterly entangled they'd gotten their naked little tails all knotted together, and that was what this intersection reminded him of. This was not the junction of three streets so much as it was a hopeless knot, two main roads and one residential off-shoot that ran head long into one another, with a forlorn looking island in the center pretending to shape the traffic into a roundabout. Ed watched from the mouth of one of the three streets as a draft horse drawn cart nearly ran headlong into an automobile coming out from one of the other two; the respective drivers swore at each other and then reluctantly agreed to share the space.

Crazy, Ed tsked, shaking his head. He had been told this city's traffic was strange, but every time he ran afoul of it he never ceased to be amazed. In Central, intersections were two streets only. In Central, troublesome interchanges had military police posted. In Central --

In Central, things were only laid out so nicely because the city itself had once been razed entirely, the product of his own father's handiwork. The city was so perfect because it was artificial -- for all he knew, Dante herself (_or his father, with her_) had arranged its rebirth, kept tight control over its growth so that it might become the shining jewel it was today. But Ed had seen its old ruins buried beneath the surface and walked those ancient streets. He had seen how disorderly the city must have been even before Hohenheim's alchemy had swallowed it.

Maybe it was time he stopped making such constant value judgments. He of all people should know that sometimes things were not always as simple as they seemed.

Jean had said he was to look for a building with a flower shop at street level, and he must be in the right place because there it was, bold as brass, directly across the traffic circle. This part of town was a confusing hybrid of commercial and residential zoning - assuming, of course, they did zones here at all. Ed supposed it wasn't entirely wrong to be displeased with aspects of this world which were just downright silly. Three-way intersections? Silly. Lack of zoning...? Perhaps not entirely silly, he considered, looking around the circular intersection and its hybrid house/store fronts. He'd always thought that Central's emphasis on 'shopping areas' versus 'living areas' was a bit obnoxious. For a person to own a business they had needed to rent a separate space for their store, which was a prohibitive cost for many start-ups. It was one of the reasons Auntie Pinako had given for not wanting to move her business into Central.

_"I have my set-up here right where the beds are, all under one roof - why would I go elsewhere to do surgery? Those Central folk can come here to me, if they're so inclined for Rockbell automail."_

He could practically hear the old woman's voice in his head, irascible but friendly, and Ed let himself crack a little smile. Now that he thought about it, Pinako probably wouldn't put up with him being such a wet hanky about all of this, either.

_"Upset over intersections? Intersections!? Boy, if that's the worst thing you've got to worry about, you're doing mighty fine."_

Right. He had bigger fish to fry.

Ed shook himself a little and reached back to straighten the mess running had made out of his ponytail, then down to straighten his jacket and shirt collar. The tie around his neck had also started to come undone, and unfortunately he quickly realized it was irreparable. Fixing the thing without a mirror was well beyond him. With only slight reluctance he undid his noose of formality and stuffed it deep into his pants-pocket. He would look a bit less professional this way...but oh, what the hell did it matter? He had never come to lab or lecture dressed up in a tie, and Alfons would probably mock his (admittedly laughable) attempt at adjusting it.

He jogged the last leg of the roundabout up to the little flower shop that Jean had claimed marked Alfons's boarding house and scrutinized it carefully. Overall, it was a rather larger building than he had expected. The house was two stories of sturdy beige brick and seemed to stretch back far away from the street. The ground level opened up into a storefront with a window display full of dried floral wreaths, root vegetables, potted houseplants - and indeed a small selection of fresh cut flowers despite the chill breeze whistling outside. Ed wondered if the proprietor owned a greenhouse. Munich would be warmer in the summer, his father kept promising, but from fall to early spring it had been cold as the proverbial witch's tit.

Question was, how did he get to Alfons?

He circled around to each side investigating but garnered no further clues as to where the bastard's lair might be, there were no side entrances or fire escapes like at his father's apartment house. The rest of the building seemed to be just a regular house, if again, a large one compared to its neighbors. Its narrow windows were all fitted with heavy shutters, and most of them were drawn closed. There didn't seem to be any other access to the building save through the floral shop.

_Smart marketing_, Ed thought with a snort, then gave up and pushed his way in through the florist's front door. A little bell above the door tingled merrily and he waited patiently as someone stirred at the back of the shop.

"Coming!"

The voice was distressingly familiar, and Ed braced himself for what he knew had to be coming.

Even still, the reality shocked him. The woman was nearly old enough to be his mother, and she was clad in the typical fashion of mature women in this world - a modest beige skirt, like a slice of the brick outside, and a long-sleeved button-down shirt with an apron over both, signifying she was a shop worker. Her face, however...Ed knew it instantly, and the recognition hurt. She had Gracia Hughes's sweet smile, round cheeks, even her hairstyle. Short, wispy brown hair curled down along either side of her face, parted just the way the real Gracia's always had been.

At least she had the right eye color, Ed thought distractedly. Unlike Alfons, this woman could _be_ her counterpart in the flesh, a false Mrs. Hughes stepping directly out of his dreams to become a waking nightmare.

He wondered again if these experiences could be considered proof that there was a higher power, and that said higher power was watching him, and laughing.

"May I help you?"

What was he here to do again? "I..." Ed began and then promptly trailed off, and the woman looked distinctly amused at the way he averted his eyes. Fuck, the lady even laughed like Gracia. It had been a long time since he'd last seen her in person, but Mrs. Hughes's laugh had always been very distinctive. A polite word for it. One of the few serious fights he'd ever heard Hughes get into on the phone with the Colonel had been about Gracia's giggle-cough. The entire office had been able to hear Hughes shouting through the receiver about how he knew the truth, 'her voice was like an angel's'. And then the First Lieutenant had sensibly pointed out that if Mustang had really wanted to _end_ the conversation, he might have been better off not to insult Hughes's beloved wife, and everyone had laughed…he still remembered how they'd laughed.

"Sir? Do you need help finding something?"

He must have stood there reminiscing for too long though because the saleslady went on the aggressive. She took a step forward and bent her head down to catch his eye again, and there was no more avoiding that damnable, familiar smile.

Incredibly, her tone turned flirtatious.

"Something for a lady friend, perhaps? No need to be shy. "

Ed flushed hard and shook his head, annoyed with himself for being so off-kilter.

"No, no, I'm looking for Alfons," he managed. "Alfons Heiderich. Do I have the right address?"

"Oh!" she said, sounding surprised. Her eyes flicked up and down his front, lingered at his ponytail. "Are you a friend of Mr. Heiderich's?"

Ed considered this, then decided it didn't matter what he told the shop lady. "Yes," he said. "Do I have the right address?"

"You do," Not-Gracia said primly. "He is one of my boarders upstairs."

Landlady, not just the shop lady, Ed amended. There seemed to be a lot of them around.

He kicked himself a second later, realizing the reason. Of course there were a lot of women letting rooms...this was a broken country, reeling in the aftermath of a war. Likely a lot of them had lost their husbands, and letting out rooms was a needed source of income. He felt a pang again at the bottom of his stomach, wondering if that meant this world's Hughes was also dead. Would the Gate truly be so cruel, to make the worlds parallel this directly? Whatever the case, he knew he couldn't ask.

Especially not when the woman wasn't being particularly forthcoming as it was. Not-Gracia was observing him now as if she were seeing him for the first time all over again, a slight frown tugging down her full lips. Apparently she didn't like him as much now that he wasn't a paying customer.

"Um...may I see him?" Ed prodded. "If he's in?"

"I don't know," Not-Gracia replied. She clasped her hands together in front of her, ever-so-slightly wrung them. "I'm not sure he's taking visitors. He hasn't been down for boarder's supper in the past few days…he's taking his meals out, if he's taking them at all."

Her motherly face darkened, telling Ed just what she thought of _that_. Apparently this Gracia had the same opinion the real one did about people skipping meals.

"I think he might be ill, that's usually what it means when he's closeted for so long," she said.

"Yes, ah, actually, that's exactly why I've come," Ed said, putting on his very best 'concerned citizen' face. "I'm here from the university...the guys at his research group are concerned about him. We've got some important business to discuss but he hasn't been on campus all week."

Not-Gracia's little frown deepened. "Hm…he hasn't answered his door today, either. It's laundry day – I do for all my tenants, you see. I went up earlier but he didn't come to put anything out."

"Of course, I can still try and fetch him if you'd like. You two are welcome to take tea in the sitting room…I'm afraid I don't have much, but I can offer you some breakfast tea."

Ed snorted. Now that was a bad idea if he'd ever heard one. Alfons, himself, and some poor woman's best china…

"No, er, if it's quite all right, I'll just go up myself. The matter is private and if he isn't feeling well I can always just call it through the door."

For a few heart-stopping moments, he didn't think the woman was going to let him past her. Not-Gracia's eyes narrowed on him hard and Ed was suddenly aware that perhaps that had been the wrong thing to say. It occurred to him belatedly that perhaps asking for free reign to wander in a widow's home was not the best course of action.

"Well, I suppose I could show you up," she said at last, indicating a set of stairs visible behind her, though her eyes remained hard on him and his long ponytail, and she did not step out of the way. For the first time, Ed was starting to regret not taking more of his father's advice about fashion. He felt the weight of his tie in his pocket like a stone.

"What did you say your name was again, Mr...?"

"Sorry, I didn't," Ed said. He took a page from the Roy Mustang book of negotiating and gave the woman his very best debonair smile, right before lie. "The name's 'Christian'."

He gave her the name of Alfons's former official rival, a young man who had also been heading a rocketry project under Oberth's tutelage. His real name was certainly right out. If he gave her "Edward Elric" and she checked with Alfons, he could bet all hopes he had of reconciling with the man were off. After how they'd last parted ways, he was willing to bet that Alfons wanted to see him even less than he wanted to see Alfons. It wasn't the best solution, but at least Christian's name might lure Alfons down here - assuming of course, the sot got on better with other folks he had differences with.

"And you can tell Alfons I have a message for him, if he'll hear it," Ed went on, a little desperately. "A message from Professor Sommerfeld. The physicist? If he won't see me, I guess I could leave a note, but it really is imperative that we discuss the matter soon-"

Thankfully, not-Gracia finally seemed to fold - either at the name-dropping, or perhaps she was simply too busy to care. Her eyes flicked briefly to his ponytail one last time and then she finally dropped her gaze. Turned back to her dried flower bouquets.

"All right then. It's up the stairs and to the left, first door," she said, pointing behind her into the next room. "If you might do me one favor?"

"Anything."

"Do tell Mr. Heiderich to bring his linens down, if he's at all feeling up to it. I'm going to get the washboard out once I close the shop for lunch." She wrung her hands together, looking fretful. "Tell him I apologize for not fetching it earlier, but he didn't answer the door, and I've an order to finish by this afternoon-"

"Of course. I'm sure Alfons will understand." Ed replied smoothly, almost purring.

Not-Gracia's shoulders eased, and she gave him a smile every bit as angelic as Hughes had ever claimed his wife's had been.

"Thank you," she said. "You're such a nice young man."

_You and Alphonse are such nice boys to help around the house._

And then not quite as smoothly Ed turned and bolted through the open doorway, grateful for the chance to escape the lie of that gentle face.

The upper floor of the boarding house turned out to be nothing at all like the apartment house he was used to. Instead of rows and rows of thankless, gray doors, there seemed to be only four boarding rooms, each marked by a separate brass knocker. The doors were oak, probably the house's originals, and Miss...whatever her name was, Ed had forgotten to ask; Miss Not-Gracia had decorated each with a name card woven in to a different wreath of dried flowers. Ed couldn't help but snicker at that. He wondered what Alfons thought about living under the sign of lavender.

He wasn't here to make fun of the man though, as tempting as the thought was. Ed drew in a deep breath of lavender and smoothed his hair back once more.

_Here goes nothing_, he thought, and rapped hard on Alfons's door.

The result was anti-climactic: no response at all.

_Yeah, there went nothing all right_, Ed thought in yet another pun that would make his brother proud. Slightly cross, he tried again, this time with his prosthetic arm.

Again, nothing.

Ed pounded on the door a third time, though he was beginning to wonder whether or not Alfons really was out, when suddenly there was a metallic click of a bolt being drawn on the other side. The door swung open so quickly Edward barely had time to step out of its way, certainly didn't have time to draw back out of eyeshot like he had planned.

The door opened into a dusky maw of an apartment; no lights seemed to be burning inside. Alfons was standing there in the doorway like a ghost, pale and somehow faded around the edges. There were heavy bags beneath the man's eyes and even his hair looked wilted. The only sign of color in his face was the yellowing remains of an ugly bruise, and Edward recognized his own knuckle-marks in the curve of Alfons's cheek.

Alfons took in just whom it was standing in the hall, and the man's tired eyes widened.

"Hey, um--look, so I'm here say I'm--"

He didn't even get to the word 'sorry' before Alfons turned and started to yank the door shut, looking slightly panicked. Ed swore and lunged to stick his foot in the gap, his false foot which he knew could stand up to pressure. Even still, the heavy oak made a crunching sound against the side of his leg and Ed's heart leapt into his mouth. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_, sometimes he forgot that this prosthetic wasn't automail.

Alfons let out a strangled cry, proving Ed was not the only one who'd heard the prosthetic creak.

"Let go of the door, damn it!" Ed snapped and grabbed the edge with his gloved prosthetic hand, used the machine's unnatural strength to wrest the door open so he could extract his trapped leg. He pulled it back and put his weight back on it slowly, testing to see if the prosthesis would still hold.

Thankfully, it seemed okay. There was a slight indentation in the side of his shoe near the ankle, but that could well be the leather compressing around his prosthetic.

"…are you all right?" Alfons asked, also staring at his shoe. Amazingly, he sounded half-way concerned.

"Yeah, it's just my falsie," Ed grumbled. He bent down and pulled his pants cuff out over the site of the 'injury', slightly self-conscious.

"Oh." An uncomfortable silence, and then -

"What are _you_ doing here?"

Same old Alfons. Ed gritted his teeth and tried not to let the condescension in the man's tone get to him. Alfons made the second person pronoun sound like a curse.

"Trying to apologize, all right?" Ed snapped up at Alfons. "You didn't have to slam the fucking door on me. On my _leg_!"

"H-how was I to know what you were here for?" Alfons retorted finally. "And besides, I thought I told you - I am through with you!" For all his bluster, though, he seemed intensely uneasy. His eyes darted to Ed again, to the fact that Ed was only just straightening up, and he suddenly made a desperate grab for the doorknob.

"Well, guess what, buster," Ed growled back. "I'm not through with_you_!" He caught the door with his elbow and surged through the narrowing gap, head back and drawn up to his full (if admittedly not very impressive) height. The secret to being assertive was simply not to look cowed, no matter how much larger or taller the opponent might be.

Alfons apparently didn't know the first thing about being assertive because he backpedaled into his own hall and nearly fell over a coat rack. He yelped and swore as one of its tines caught him in the back of the head.

Ed stopped in the doorway and stared at him impassively, careful to school his face into a neutral expression. Al had always warned him it was his face that gave his emotions away, and according to the bastard colonel, the rest of his body too (but well, he had more of a tendency to openly flip off the Colonel so he wasn't sure that counted). When he needed to put on an act, he had to pay attention to his acting.

"I've been asking around on campus," Ed said. He folded his arms in front of him to further the sensible, no-nonsense appearance he was after. "Did you know the aerospace program's funding is in jeopardy?"

Alfons nodded dumbly, apparently not trusting himself to speak. Perhaps he hadn't known. All the better for his case, Ed considered, and forged onward before Alfons had time to get a word in.

"Seems the powers that be consider rocketry a dead-end," Ed said, reveling slightly in the outraged snarl that garnered. "Not an efficient enough use of university resources. Well, guess what - I got you a deal. If you can get a working product by exhibition time this quarter, you're good to go for next semester."

Now Alfons was just staring, gaping at Ed as if he'd suddenly sprouted a second head.

_Yeah, that's right, you ass…I did something nice for you. Got that one over on you, didn't I? Bet you never saw it coming_.

Ed took a moment to preen, and then, emboldened, he went in for the kill.

"In exchange, all I'm asking is…let me back on the team, okay? We don't have to be friends, fuck, we don't even have to pretend to like each other. Just give me my distillation stuff and I'll pony up fuel when you need it, and everything will work out, yeah?"

It was a good deal, he felt; reasonable. Perhaps not entirely equivalent, but it was the best he could do. This world was imperfect, there were no guarantees, but with this approach…he could see no way in which acceptance was not a foregone conclusion. The first law of trade was exchanging losses and gains, but in the human sphere that came down to supply and demand. And here, Ed had a commodity that no one else was supplying. He couldn't go back in time and prevent himself from decking the other man, from causing Alfons to hate him in the first place - but like it or not, because of market forces, Alfons was going to have to deal with him anyway. He could fix this.

A grin spread across his face.

"So, what do you say?"

Alfons's pale eyes flicked away and then back again. He rubbed the back of his hand nervously, but when he set his jaw he set it firm.

"No."

"…what?" It was the only word that came to him; the only word that made sense. "What do you mean, no?"

"I said, _no_," Alfons replied, though he seemed agitated. His eyes darted back and forth as if canvassing an escape route, not seeming to want to stop on Ed's face. Yet for all that his voice remained firm, with an underlying note of resolve that seemed to surprise even its owner. Alfons straightened up like a puppet being lifted by a string running out the top of its head, as if some outside force was reaching into the dim little foyer and pulling him upright, infusing him with power. Ed watched, transfixed, as Alfons's pale features began to visibly darken, twisting from something unassuming and harmless to barely bridled rage.

Ed took an uneasy step backward in spite of himself, alarmed. Somewhere along the line, something had gone horribly wrong. Alfons was supposed to be annoyed but concede anyway. He wasn't supposed to look like he was struggling to keep his composure. He certainly wasn't supposed to say _no_.

"Look, I know you have no reason to trust me," Ed said. He scrubbed a hand through his hair, then lowered it, spread both hands wide in pleading. Supplication. "But I'm here because I'm trying to fix this. We're supposed to be men of reason, well, let's be reasonable, right? I've got something you need. You've got something I need. It's an equivalent exchange. Six for a half-dozen. Tit for tat."

"That would assume the two offers are of equal value. And I don't think we're at all using the same metric," Alfons said. His upper lip curled back like a cur's, snarling. "You act as if I _need_ you to make deals for me. Who do you think started this seminar, anyway? Who do you think got Mister Oberth on board in the first place? Because it was my idea, not his at the time."

His eyes narrowed to furious slits.

"I assure you, I can take care of myself."

Ed took a deep breath, trying to stay himself against the sudden storm that was Alfons Heiderich, the lightning flashing within those piercing eyes. Tried to think. Yes, Alfons might have connections, that was a possibility…but Alfons had also been off campus for at least a week by all accounts. Alfons hadn't just had the experience of being turned down by professor after professor. And given how Sommerfeld had talked…Sommerfeld had even showed off the fact that he wasn't supporting Alfons. He'd all but thrown the resource requests that he'd denied in Ed's face.

Alfons didn't know everything. Maybe that was the best thing Ed had going for him.

"You do know Oberth is jumping ship, right?" Ed asked. "His dissertation isn't going over well, so he's cutting and running to Heidelberg. What are you gonna do when that happens, huh? When I talked to him, he wasn't interested in sticking around for even next semester."

Alfons's eyes widened a bit, but his voice remained steely, flat; gave Ed no ground. He took another step forward and it was hard for Ed not to want to retreat. Damn, the sonovabitch was tall.

"I've heard that was a possibility, yes. You think it matters? _Some of us_ take care to cultivate relationships with our mentors. I knew there was never any guarantee Mr. Oberth was going to stick with the program. I've been working to foster alternative connections for that exact reason. _Important_ connections within the department, people who matter, people who are in positions to get us what we need—"

"People like Professor Sommerfeld?"

The way Alfons's head jerked said that he hadn't expected Ed to know that name. His forward march stopped dead. He seemed uncertain.

"You know the Professor?"

"I saw him this morning," Ed said coolly, neglecting of course to mention that he'd only just met the man for the first time. "And no offense…but if you expect him to be your meal ticket, you've got another think coming. He's the one who agreed to sponsor the seminar, but I about had to twist his proverbial arm off for the privilege."

And nearly his not-so-proverbial arm as well. If his father hadn't come with him…Ed wondered again what it meant that Sommerfeld was so desperate for Hohenheim's help that he had been willing to bend over backwards to curry Hohenheim's favor.

Alfons did not seem impressed, however.

"Well, look at who was asking," Alfons said shortly. "If that had been_me_-"

"Then what? He would have just dropped everything and signed on the dotted line? Seeing as how you've had so much success with that in the past."

Alfons's eyebrows nearly climbed off his head.

"Yeah, he showed me all those requisition forms you tried to sneak through him – all the ones he denied." It was childish, he knew it, but he couldn't help relishing that word, 'denied'. It rolled off his tongue neatly, slapped Alfons in the face. The man visibly winced, looked even more furious, but it was unavoidable – sometimes, the truth hurt.

Vindictive pleasure had its time and place though, and this was neither of them. Ed back-tracked a bit, trying once again for a diplomatic edge.

"He does like you though," he pointed out, pacifying, "he said as much. Asked me to tell you to drop in, he hasn't seen you all week. And if he likes you and he hasn't been able to get things going for you, who will?"

It was admittedly a shot in the dark. For all he knew, Alfons had loads of professors that he sucked up to. But Alfons's eyes, skittering off to the side for a moment, told him all that he needed to know.

_He was bullshitting me, when he went on about having such 'important' connections. Acting like he had something lined up…he didn't, did he?_

"Be that as it may," Alfons said slowly. His eyes were back on Ed, warier now but still full of fire. "I can assure you – whatever Professor Sommerfeld is willing to offer you, he'd be willing to offer me. Why would I need to bother with a middle man? I've got plenty of other possibilities -"

Ed acted on his hunch and shook his head. "Bullshit. I'd like to see you name them."

That got Alfons's dander up for real. He jerked his head back in that weird bobbing motion he always did right before he was about to bawl somebody out, nostrils flared out, every inch of him indignant. Dorchett had remarked one time that it must be a reflex in response to someone shoving the proverbial pole up Alfons's ass, and the laugh they had all gotten out of that was well worth the lengthy catfight that had followed. Ed braced himself for an even louder, more belligerent turn to the conversation, and fought hard not to give in and be swept along.

"I don't have to divulge my resources to the likes of you!" Alfons snapped back. As predicted, his volume skyrocketed as his fury visibly started to regain steam. He resumed prowling closer to Ed, stalked right up into Ed's personal space and sneered down at him. Ed stood his ground.

"Sure, but I'd think you'd let the other guys know! I talked to the Frenchman this morning and he's convinced you're all screwed."

He clenched his fists, met Alfons snarl for snarl, looking up at him and trying not to hate the crick in his neck. He had never been able to stare down anyone, but at the very least he could hold fast, firm, refuse to be cowed.

"If you had that kind of security, why is the rest of the team so worried? Why wouldn't you have secured that sponsorship? The answer is, you don't have it, so stop pretending you don't need this."

Alfons gritted his teeth, head still held up high. Said nothing. From the looks of it, he was too frustrated to say anything. Ed watched his shoulders shake for a moment, fascinated by just how stubborn an ass the man must be not to be able to just admit when he was caught out.

He tried not to recognize himself in that.

"And anyway, to play devil's advocate…so say you're right and you can make that deal with Sommerfeld on your own. Guess what – end of semester expo is in less than three weeks. He wants a _working product_ by then, Alfons. How are you gonna manage the fuel? I know who you're working with…Dorchett, the Frenchman, all of them, they're good guys, but they're all thumbs with the distillation setup and you know it. Your physics and engineering people, they're good with rivets and ballistics, but they don't know chem! I do."

"A-as do I," Alfons retorted. He still had his head tilted back in that pompous way of his directly above Ed, like he was literally staring down his nose at Ed, but his voice didn't sound quite as confident. Ed heard that little tell-tale stutter and pressed his advantage for all it was worth.

"And? According to the Frenchman, you've been holed up in here a week trying to piece my notes together, when they need you at the lab. You're busy replacing me, well - who's gonna replace you?"

He rose up on his tiptoes and looked Alfons square in the eye. Met fire with fire and damn the consequences.

"You need me and you know it, and like it or not, we're both going to have to live with that."

The storm that had been building finally came to a head. Alfons _loomed_above him, a ghostly, furious specter in the dusky foyer light, and although there were dark bags beneath his eyes and sallow patches over his cheeks, he somehow looked more alive and terrible than Ed had ever seen him.

"I need you? I _need_ you?!" If a single word could kill, Ed would have been dead twice over. Alfons said 'need' the way other men cursed. "The truth, Mr. Elric, is that I need you like I need a hole in the head! This is _my_ project, you ingrate! I built it from the ground up, I fought for the funding, I plan everything, I put this together with my own two hands…and then here you come, barge into my flat like you own the place, and you presume to make decisions for my seminar!? You don't get to dictate what I do and do not need!"

_You stupid, stubborn son-of-a-bitch!_ Never before in his life – not with Pinako, not with Russell, not even with the Colonel – had Ed wanted to tear into someone so badly. He had come with only the best of intentions, kept his cool, kept the dialogue professional and rational…and Alfons was having a possessive hissy fit. He thought of Dorchett's work on the fuel regulation system and the Frenchman's ballistics equations, all the pieces of the rocket that different members had contributed. That he _himself _had contributed.

"And you have no right to act like this is a one-man show," Ed snapped back, no longer able to contain his rage. "What about your so-called team members? Jean, Dor, Lars, all those guys? They aren't just there so you can play at being Lord and Master. You make those little progress charts and assign jobs…I'd like to see you build that rocket by yourself, I really would. You might have half of it done by the time you die." It was an exaggeration, but one that hit home. Alfons recoiled visibly, and Ed took a step inward, not giving Alfons an inch of comfortable space – after all, he was the one who'd gotten up in Ed's face.

"The rocket's as much theirs – and mine – as yours," he added, thinking of his own work…endless hours spent experimenting with distillation equipment. "It's not your own private little jerk fest."

Alfons's hands jerked violently and for a second Ed thought the man was going to haul off and hit him. He wound up pointing instead, jabbed a finger at Ed in silent accusation.

"Listen to me," he hissed, leaning down, leaning close within inches of Ed's face. His breath was hot and poisonous, stale coffee and cheap beer mixing to ill effect. "Listen to me, you bastard, I'm good to my people…I've fought for them and I treat them well, no matter what their problems are. I gave you a chance, didn't I?"

"Yeah, I know," Ed ground out. "A cripple and a foreigner, what sane person would want me? I'm impressed by your benevolence, really I am. Well, tell me fearless leader – is it being good to your people, turning down this deal so you can have your pride? Is it worth more to you to lose your group's sponsorship rather than have to work with me? Cause if so, I'd say that makes you a pretty piss-poor leader."

There was a pregnant pause.

"…I can make it work," Alfons said, after a fashion. Weakly, now - his lips and words were still putting up a good fight, but the rest of him was starting to sag. "Your notes aren't completely impossible to decipher. I'll figure it out, given enough time."

There was a barb in there. A desperate, piss poor one at that. Ed resisted the urge to comment on the relative legibility of Alfons's chicken-scratch handwriting, the fact that like all intelligent alchemists, he still tended to write theories in code. It wasn't relevant, he told himself, this wasn't a battle he needed to have. Alfons was just trying to sidetrack him, the bastard – the same way he always did; he would launch some new ludicrous assault and then Ed would be spending all his energy countering that, when really the fool was just trying to avoid admitting the truth, the truth that he had lost -

He wondered what kind of a fool it made him, that he'd never made that connection before.

Maybe, maybe it was because he finally had a fight worth focusing on – a fight worth winning. And for the sake of that – for Al's sake, for the people back home's sake, fuck, for _his_ sake – he supposed he could let another argument go.

"Given enough time, you could do this by yourself? Well, time's the one thing you don't have," he said instead. Tilted his head trying to catch Alfons's eye again. Alfons kept trying to avert his gaze. "You've got less than a month. Look at me, please - can you honestly look me in eye and tell me you have a snowball's chance in hell to get a fuel that works within the operating parameters?"

Alfons said nothing, just stared down at the answerless floor. His mouth worked soundlessly, tasting various words, but none of them seemed to suffice.

"Fine," he said finally, in a quiet voice. He stepped backward and away, a pale ghost retreating into the shadows of the foyer. No longer impeding Ed, letting Ed come in. "You want back on the team? Fine. It's clear that I can't stop you."

He clenched his fists, still refusing to meet Ed's eyes.

"You're back on the team, for as many more days as it exists. I doubt that will be long."

"…what are you saying?" Ed asked. Dreaded the answer. Again, see the part where there was no such thing as superstitious luck – only bad luck, the only kind that happened to himself.

_I didn't tell Oberth and Heidelberg to fuck off for nothing, did I?!_

Alfons looked up again, suddenly defiant in Ed's general direction. He whipped his head up so fast Ed could have blinked and missed it. Those blue eyes were a bit watery around the edges, but pure sapphire heat still glared out at him. Alfons's expression was desperate, almost feral.

"I'm saying that it probably _is _a lost cause already, don't you get that?" Alfons cried out. He sounded like an animal in pain. "You want the truth? The truth is, yes, we are behind. Way behind. And I don't know how to fix it. Your triple-damned notes…"

"And I told you, that won't be an issue if I'm back on the team," Ed said, still a little irked. Residual frustration made his voice hard and tight. "I can read my own codes."

Alfons shook his head, swaying a little. He leaned back against the brown wainscoted wall, thumped his head back against it. Stared up into nothing.

"No, no, it's not that…it's just that the whole design, the combustion chamber, everything—we set this test up before we even got the fuel to standard, and…it's just so _fucked_, Edward," he confided in the aging plaster above them. "I've been awake for the past two and a half days, going over this stuff… I can't even tell if I'm making the right fuel for the combustion chamber we've got, and even if your numbers are right on the money, even if this formula is perfect…we're not going to get to test the rocket until exhibition, and there's only about a million other things that could go wrong."

He smiled down at Ed then, a bloodless grimace. Ed had seen more joy in a funeral eulogist's eyes.

"This is the last chance I have, you know?" Alfons said. His voice grew thick, full of loathing. "My stipend runs out at the end of this semester. Unlike some people I could name, I don't have a rich, connected father to buy my way back into school."

That little barb almost hooked him. A rivulet of anger ran its course through Ed's body at the mention of Hohenheim, fueled the urge, curiously enough, to defend his father's honor. But that look in Alfons's eyes…

Damn the man, he thought, for becoming so very…human, lately. It was a lesson he had learned long ago, that it was hard to hold on to hate in the face of an enemy who was no longer faceless evil. Like with Lust. Like with Greed.

But there was a kind of joy in realizing this, not just Schadenfraude, but a joy at knowing a simple, comforting truth. Alfons was no saint, nor abject sinner either. At the end of the day, Alfons Heiderich too was nothing more than the sum of his parts – depressingly, but in other ways gloriously-- human.

And so instead of fury, instead frustration…this time Ed did not have to work to avoid blowing up at the insult, or fight back the urge to rail that it wasn't fair, Alfons had it all wrong. He held his head up high, took a deep breath, and met that hopeless stare with his own steady one, and gave it to Alfons straight. Man to man, one ordinary human to another.

"I don't actually have a free ride either," he said quietly. "Regardless of what you may have heard, my father isn't what got me into this university…and he sure as hell isn't the reason why I'm here today. I'm here because…because I have a dream too."

Thought of Winry and Gramma Pinako, the Colonel and his people; his master and her husband, Dublith, Central, Lior. Bright, sunny Risenberg days, when the air was warm and sweet and the forget-me-not flowers had just started to grow. But most of all Al, his baby brother who was hopefully growing too, out in the Risenberg hills, barefoot and wild and happy just the way things had used to be.

"Someday, I'm going to make it back home," he said quietly. "Back to the country where I came from. Back to where I really belong. This project is part of that. I'm going to use these rockets to get me out of this place, Alfons. It's the only thing that matters."

He could tell by Alfons's face that the man thought he was speaking metaphorically. "Ride the fast track to fame and fortune" or some such, sure, let him think that. That was okay. It didn't matter if Alfons knew the truth or not. All that mattered was that they both knew what was important.

Not petty rivalries, not minute jealousies. What was important was the_dream_, and man's capacity to have one.

"…there's no guarantee this seminar will even pan out," Alfons said at last. He was still leaning against the wall, but he was no longer so slumped. Ed offered him a rare glimpse of a smile.

"I know," Ed said.

"And I can't promise that I will ever like you," Alfons retorted suddenly, pulling away from the wall. A bit of the old fire was back in his eyes. Ed snorted and flipped his ponytail back, reached up unconsciously to adjust the tie he wasn't wearing.

"Feeling's mutual," he said. "Like I said, we don't have to like each other."

"We just have to work together," Alfons replied, mulling the idea over. His mouth drew into a hard line. "Even if that means working apart?"

"How so?"

Alfons pulled away from the wall, animated again. He still looked tired but his eyes sparkled with sudden awareness.

"My terms are," Alfons said, giving Ed a wary look, "you work nights, after-hours. So the guys won't have to deal with you, if they don't want to. If I ask around and find out they don't care, maybe you can come back for the scheduled seminar. But no promises. As you took such pains to point out earlier-" a flicker of a dirty look, and then it was gone- "just because I'm the project lead doesn't mean I get to speak for everyone on the team."

Working after-hours…Which meant, no bumming smokes off Jean. Which meant, no drinks at lunch with Dorchett. Which meant…it would be a sacrifice, but a sacrifice he was willing to accept.

He had to remember, he had made far worse in his life.

"Okay," Ed said.

"And you have to discuss with _me_ what you're doing with the equipment, what you throw out, what you keep. We've got three weeks to pull off a lot of miracles, I need everybody to give me exactly what I'm asking for. I _know_ you've got ideas for better stuff, but that's not what our combustion system is built for. I want fuel for the rocket I have, not for the rocket I wish I had."

Spirited. Happy. Genuinely enjoying being in charge, in coordinating things. In doing all that planning and dictating and micromanaging that Ed himself had always hated – Mustang-stuff, not for him and Al. Alfons paced back and forth like he _was_ the Colonel, giving orders.

"…okay," Ed said again. His pride still tasted bitter at the back of his throat, but he was starting to find that each time he swallowed it, it got better.

"And your terms?" Alfons said, pausing in his march, staring at Ed. He seemed to be waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"My terms are that I stay on the project," Ed said simply. "That I get credit for my work. And that I get to have input on future design...I still stand by what I've told you, regular petrol is a shitty fuel."

For a moment, he thought they were going to get into it again. Alfons's nostrils flared like he was annoyed…then he stopped mid-sneer, lowered his head. Impossibly, gave a little sheepish grin.

"…you're right," he admitted finally, with a curt little nod of his head. "It is. But someday…I think you're right, I think we will be working with liquid oxygen. I did manage to get that far, translating your notes."

It was as close to a compliment as Alfons had ever paid him, and it was strange, seeing that expression on Alfons's face. Like he was impressed by him, like he was proud of him. Ed tried not to let his jaw bruise when it banged on the floor.

Neither spoke for a moment, just stood there sizing each other up – but for once, not preparing to tangle. It wasn't a comfortable silence, by any means…but it was something.

It was not friendship, but at least it was respect. Ed thought he could live with that.

He grinned.

"Speaking of notes…you want me to come in and show you what you've been missing?"

* * *

"So we have an accord then, I take it?" Ed asked, much later. His lab books were back in his possession once more, cradled protectively in the crook of his prosthetic arm. As were a few copies of the latest combustion chamber design. It had been an uneasy couple hours, punctuated by several near fights, a couple reasonable arguments…but in the end, they had both come through better off for it.

He had his position back and the rocket had a better fuel system, both of which would ultimately benefit him. If there was ever a better exchange, he had yet to see it.

"Alfons?"

"Yeah, I guess we do," Alfons said slowly. He seemed faintly embarrassed, as though he'd been caught doing something incredibly untoward. "I thought that went reasonably well…though for the record, I still don't like you." Challenging, even as he showed Ed to the door.

Ed snorted and waved with his good arm. "Same here, you dick."

"…see you tomorrow night?"

"Yeah."

They parted in the hallway and Ed traipsed on down the stairs, out through the not-Gracia's little flower shop and back into the maelstrom of streets, back down to the river and the apartment complex and to his father, who would be waiting up as always. They still didn't like each other…and probably never would, but for now, for what they needed to accomplish, they had enough. It was not a perfect solution, but it was not a perfect world. And until he could get home, where 'Alphonse' was a name for a brother and he could once again perform miracles, he would settle for this minor miracle.

The miracle known as sharing a dream.

On the way home, he whistled.

* * *

End "At the Very Ports We Blow"; to be continued in "So Shaken As We Are"

A HUGE thank you to all the readers who have followed this fic so far - your kind words and thoughts sustained me through some rough times. Illness/work kept me away from the net for a while and I apologize. To each and every reader out there, thank you!!!!


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